Pyrophobia
by z00r0pa
Summary: ModernAU :: Fili is ten when he loses his parents to a house fire in Auckland, NZ. He and his brother, Kili, are moved to the care of their uncle, Thorin Oakenshield, in the Welsh mountains. It's a complete world shift for Fili, who begins to develop a myriad of phobias and anxiety disorders that Thorin chooses to ignore. Is it too late for Thorin to get his nephew back?
1. Chapter 1

**AN. Here we are again. I am writing that sequel to Fires but this took over my life a good month and a half. So I hope you enjoy. **

* * *

_Whether I should turn out to be my own hero or not, these pages might just show. _

_ Fili _

Even in his half-conscious state, Fili can hear the wind screaming outside, dragging icy claws against his window pane, and he feels like the cold is seeping into his bones, somehow. It's cold and unwelcome. Just like his room. Stark white and monochrome, harshly greeting Fili in his sleep-infused stupor before he shuts his eyes in an attempt to block it out.

In the end, it's the sudden crashing as the window smashes open that wakes him.

He can feel the cold now, sweeping up over his bare back, icy tendrils drifting over the sensitive skin at the back of his neck. It's enough to rouse him fully from sleep, and he cracks one eye open again to see the shutters crashing and clanging wildly against the open window. It's the noise that freaks him out. It's so _loud_. Goosebumps break out over taut skin as muscles tense, and Fili grips onto the pillow until his knuckles turn white. He knows what's coming. It's happened countless times before. It just irks him that he's not getting _better_.

First is the sudden jolt of fear, running through icy bones and chilling his heart. He feels so cold, and his body tries to react. His heart rate rockets and it's all he can hear after a few seconds, the dull and repetitive thudding. It seems to reach every part of him, particularly that spot between the eyes, so he forces them shut and tries to think of something else. Then the wave of nausea hits him and his muscles clench tight again, forcing the cold out as he tries to deal with this new ailment. His chest feels like it's going to explode, he can't breathe because he is going to be sick if he does, and his heart keeps going faster and faster and he can't move or think or see straight and then-

It stops.

His attacks never last long, no more than a minute at the most, Fili knows, but that doesn't make them any better.

Digging his heels into his eyes, he tries to concentrate on getting his breathing back to normal. In, _two, three, four-_ out. It doesn't take long, Fili notices, and he decides that he must be getting used to it after all.

It hadn't been long since he'd been diagnosed with a generalised anxiety disorder, and if he was being entirely honest, he'd seen that coming a long way off. He just hadn't expected it to escalate so quickly.

Sighing, he pushes his hair out of his face and rakes it back, feeling the tug and tear as he pulls too hard on a knot. He knows he should get it cut sometime soon. Thorin hates it. Fili almost wants to keep it just for that look of unbridled disdain that Thorin gives him every morning when he comes downstairs for his coffee.

Turning his mind back to the present, he looks over at the window, pushing himself up into a sitting position. Feeling the chill of the cold Welsh mountain air outside, he untangles himself from his sheets and goes to close the window and bolt the shutters properly. He slides the last bolt in and knocks a fist against the wooden panels, as if that will keep them shut this time. It's then that Fili hears the gentle padding of bare feet outside his door, and he turns just as the door opens. It's Kili. Of course it is. Bleary-eyed and clothed in old track pants and a shirt that Fili suspects is inside out and back to front, his brother steps into the room, rubbing his eyes tiredly. He stops when he realises Fili is, in fact, awake.

"Sleepwalking?" Fili breaks the momentary silence with a half-arsed quip that he pairs with a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes and he knows it. He just hopes Kili won't notice in his half-asleep state.

"Clearly." Kili yawns widely, a grin breaking out on his youthful face. He scratches at a stubbly chin and nods towards the window. "I heard something smash. Wondered if you'd destroyed Thorin's beloved vase collection at last."

Fili just rolls his eyes and scoffs, feeling his worries slowly dissipate and warmth return to his cold body after a few moments more. He doesn't feel tired anymore, Fili notices, and he spares a glance at his alarm clock, sitting resolutely on his bedside table. The numbers are a bright, glaring blue in the darkness of the room, and they read 5:58AM. Fili sighs, and decides against going back to bed, because Mahal knows he won't get any more rest now.

"You, er, have an attack or something?" Fili remembers Kili is still standing there, looking a little more awake now. Fili confirms that his shirt is indeed inside out and back to front, and then answers with a simple, small nod. He sees Kili's face fall, and almost wishes he didn't say anything.

"Hey, it's okay. Happens all the time. It's nothing to worry about." Fili tries to smile again, but it falters almost immediately. Kili drops his head and sighs, and Fili feels a bitter pang of dismay at the motion. He crosses the room in three long strides until he's standing right in front of his little brother, and has his hands on his bony shoulders, giving them a gentle squeeze of reassurance. Kili reacts almost immediately, burying his face in Fili's neck and holding onto him as if he'd disappear if he so much as let go. And Fili lets him, sighing as he rests his chin on top of Kili's head, arms wrapping securely around his little brother's skinny form. They stay like that for a while.

It is, in fact, 6:01AM (going by the overly bright alarm clock) when Kili sniffles and steps back, arms dropping back to his sides. Fili drops one arm, but keeps one hand on Kili's shoulder, and waits for his little brother to look him in the eye. He does. There's no worry there for the moment, and Fili is happy. He drops his arm and yawns, body waking up.

"You know what I'm going to do now?" Fili asked, and Kili looked up, brow scrunched in confusion at the abrupt question.

"I'm gonna have a shower." Fili answered himself, stretching. "And you're going to make us some bacon sarnies."

Kili scoffed, folding his arms.

"And what if I want to go back to bed?"

"I can wait."

"Ah, there's nothing wrong with you." Kili laughed, quietly, not wanting to awake the beast that was sleeping in the room down the corridor. Fili grinned, and watched as Kili left the room, and when he closed the door behind him, he dropped the grin just as quick as he'd put it on. It was for show, of course it was.

It was all for show.

There was _everything_ wrong with him.

_June 7_th 2012  
a list of things that are WRONG:  
- lyssophobia; the fear of growing mad, e  
- cleisophobia; the fear of being trapped, confined  
- atychiphobia; the fear of FAILING, of FAILURE  
- PYROPHOBIA PYROPHOBIA PYROPHOBIA  
- to sum up i am a paranoid, useless piece of shit  
- i'm mentally fucked up and i have only myself to blame  
- i feel like everyone thinks i'm a burden, i feel like i know I AM  
- i don't feel properly anymore, i can't be happy without feeling sad, i can't be sad without feeling angry, i can't feel angry without feeling guilty  
- i can't even do anything useful anymore and that makes me feel absolutely worthless

- Fili

**oOo**

Once in the bathroom, Fili locks the door, discards his clothes and moves towards the shower. He lets it run for a minute or two, long enough for it to warm up. In the meantime, he catches sight of himself in a mirror.

He's pretty glad that Kili couldn't see his face properly in the dark room, but in the harsh light of the monochrome (fucking_ monochrome_ – Thorin had a problem) bathroom, the white marble reflected the light onto his face, highlighting just how fucking awful he looked. His eyes are bloodshot and set in circles of black (he hasn't slept properly for a few days, he knows that), his stubble is starting to turn into a fully fledged beard (he cringes inwardly), his hair is greasy and matted and he really fucking needs a haircut, there are bruises fading under his hairline just above his left temple (not his fault, Kili opened a cupboard door without warning and bashed him in the head – great fun for Thorin and Kili, not so much for him) and he's pretty sure he could get away with saying he was a war veteran for all the scars he can see.

They're not much, really, just small white lines etched onto his skin like tattoos, a permanent reminder of stupid ideas and reckless adventures he'd managed to get himself involved in. It's just that there's _so many_ of them. He remembers the one on his nose is from that time he trusted Kili with the tidying away of pots and pans, and ended up in the nearest A&E needing stitches after a _hilarious_ incident where Kili thought that throwing pans to his brother without notifying him first was a great idea. There's another one just above his lip, and that was from a dog who'd dared to chase his brother down the street. Fili had been stupid enough to run at the dog, trying to scare it away with his barbaric screaming, only to have it jump up and claw his face. Thorin had simply stared at Fili when he'd told him, and then wordlessly cleaned up the cuts. He wasn't angry, just... _exasperated_.

The most prominent one, however, is the one that stretches from the outer corner of his left eye to the bottom of his jaw in a crude, jagged line. It cuts through his beard slightly, and there's a small line where hair doesn't grow. Hardly noticeable, but still there. That one, Fili runs a finger over it gingerly as though expecting a flash of pain, was from maybe five, six years ago. He'd run away. He got lost in the wilds of the Beacons within a few days, fell from a sheer drop of maybe eight feet, broke his leg and slashed his face open on a rock. Thank Mahal he was unconscious, Fili thinks. It was pure luck that Balin had found him.

Shaking his head, Fili wills himself to think of something else instead as he steps into the shower.

He stands under the stream for a few minutes, simply relishing the warmth sinking into his skin. He feels so _cold_ all the time now, and sometimes he forgets and it's only when Kili almost jumps out of his skin or Thorin makes a comment that Fili realises. He doesn't even know why he's so cold, he just is.

Just is.

He gets to work on his Mahal forsaken hair first, deft fingers working out the knots and tangles with frightening speed. Fili considers dreading his hair. It wouldn't look that bad, and it'd save the hassle of sorting out these bloody knots all the time. He thinks Thorin would probably have a full on meltdown.

Once he finishes his hair, he grabs the nearest shower gel and washes thoroughly, feeling like he hasn't had a shower in days. He probably hasn't, he thinks. Time doesn't occur to him much anymore. It slips by unnoticed for the most part.

He's distracted from his thoughts by the unmistakable smell of… oh, _Mahal_, _no_. He grabs the bottle with renewed vigour, and glares at the label, hoping he will be proved wrong.

'Apple scented.'

"Oh, _fuck_."

Fili slams the water off and steps out of the shower, drying himself off angrily with a fresh towel. He doesn't even know why he's so angry, it's just shower gel! But fucking hell, it's the _wrong_ shower gel. Who the fuck has _apple _scentedshower gel anyway? It's probably Kili. Thorin wouldn't pick such a crappy scent. And that's not even Thorin's bathroom anyway. Mahal, he's _pissed_.

Securing the towel around his waist, he unlocks the door, picks up his clothes and heads across the hallway and back to his room wearing a grim expression the entire way. He digs out some jeans that look vaguely clean: an old Pink Floyd tee that he's pretty sure he stole off Thorin and some socks that, for once, don't have any holes in them, and then gets dressed quickly. He sits there for a few moments, feeling a burning pain in his chest that lasts a few seconds and then just disappears. He passes it off as one of those things that just happen once and you don't really know why, and looks around the room. He doesn't really know why he does, he just does.

The window is still shut along with the dark grey shutters, and Fili feels oddly accomplished at the sight. The blinding blue digits on the alarm clock don't seem so garish now, as they read 6:28AM clearly. Fili notices that the room could do with a tidy, as he peers over to his desk. There's a multitude of pens and pencils there, half of which have the austere Dimrill Dale College logo stamped onto them. He's fairly sure he's stolen most of them from Kili, and they've just accumulated over the years.

Moving on over his desk, he sees his journal is there, underneath all the pens and pencils and screwdrivers? Yes, screwdrivers, and he's tempted to write another entry. Or put it away somewhere so that Kili can't just walk in and read it, because Mahal, if there's anything Fili doesn't want his little brother to see, it's that journal.

It's a simple little grey leather-bound book with a family crest (a crown with seven stars, Fili is pretty sure it's the crest of Durin, but he's too afraid to ask Thorin) embossed on the front in silver, that Thorin made for him for his sixteenth birthday. He didn't touch it until he was twenty. But the things that he finds himself writing in there are things he keeps to himself, _and for good reason_, he thinks as he opens to the next clean page and picks up a pen to write.

_June 8__th__ 2012  
I had another attack earlier. That was okay though, but now I can't breathe without my chest fucking setting itself on fire or so it feels like. Also, my face is a complete mess. Why didn't anyone tell me? I'm actually going to give people permission to knock me the hell out if I can't sleep because I look like I've crawled into a hole and fucking died and then decided to crawl back out again._

_And I used the fucking apple scented shower gel and I am so fucking angry about that. I don't even know why. It's stupid. _

_I'm stupid._

_ - Fili_


	2. Chapter 2

As Fili pads into the kitchen, he realises he can't smell any bacon burning, which is a good sign. He doesn't normally trust Kili with the kitchen as a general rule, but times have changed. He isn't expecting, however, the sight that quickly appears in front of him.

Kili is indeed in the kitchen, but the grill isn't on, and there's no frying pan, and no smell of cooking bacon at all, and Fili feels mild irritation, but decides there must be a logical reason as to why his brother neglected to actually cook the bacon. So he presses on.

"Kee?" Fili stops just beside his brother, who is practically standing in the fridge, holding a four-pint bottle of milk and staring at it with the most ridiculous expression Fili's seen on his face for a while.

As soon as Fili opens his mouth to question why, Kili turns to him slowly, raising the bottle of milk between them.

"The date." he says simply, passing the bottle to Fili who takes it gingerly, eyes wide and brow furrowed in sheer confusion.

"What?"

"The date, Fili, look at the fucking _date_!"

So Fili does, regarding his brother with an odd look. He finds the date that has been printed near the top of the bottle, and reads it.

"The.. tenth of June… fourteen twenty-two."

Oh.

"That's, er, a little out of date?" It's mildly amusing, and Fili can't help the barely-there smile that follows his statement, and it doesn't help that Kili is staring at him like he's just said he dropkicked a kitten the entire length of a rugby field.

"It's just a misprint! Do we have any bacon?" Fili pushes the milk back into Kili's arms, and delves into the fridge. The light has gone off though, and the fridge doesn't seem so cold. Fili frowns.

"Have you actually stood here for the entire time staring at that fucking bottle?"

No answer.

"Oh, _Mahal_."

Eventually, breakfast is made, but it's not bacon (there wasn't any, Fili found), instead, Fili mixes up a pancake batter and Kili digs out all the possible condiments they could need and sets them on the table, whistling to himself. Fili recognizes the tune as an old verse of Bilbo's, their local grocer/extra family member who got himself far too involved in Fili's family a couple of years ago. He almost joins in.

Almost.

Within a few minutes, they're sitting at the table, radio crackling in the background as they dig into their breakfasts. Fili has to smile at Kili's choice of pancake topping – literal ladles of Nutella. Fili mutters a comment about growing obesity rates in the UK and Kili drives his heel into Fili's foot, and the elder cries out before driving a fist into Kili's shoulder in retaliation, but that only results in Fili getting a blob of Nutella on his cheek as Kili jumps backwards, throwing his knife (that _was_ covered in said Nutella) down onto the table in order to get away.

Fili is on his feet within seconds and running after his little brother down the long kitchen.

"C'mere, hug your big brother, you _little shit_-" Fili lunges and grabs onto Kili, whose laughter (Fili's sure) can be heard through the entire Welsh countryside. He wipes the Nutella off his own face and promptly smears it all over Kili's, his yelps of protest falling on deaf ears. He quickly retreats back to his breakfast, Kili hot on his heels with a Nutella handprint over his left eye. It's not until they get back to the table that they even realise Thorin is standing there, hair closely resembling a birds nest, looking incredibly _un_intimidating in plaid pyjama trousers and an old, grey U2 t-shirt, wearing an expression that was somewhere between amusement and complete exasperation.

So, naturally, Kili decides to ease the situation with his gift of the (currently full of pancake) gab.

"Wahnt shum pancakes?"

Thorin does actually take Kili up on his offer, to Fili's surprise.

**oOo**

"What are you doing today?" Thorin asks, straight to the point as he sits down with his coffee and pancakes. It always is with him, Fili thinks to himself as he chews on a pancake morosely.

"I've got college. Ten til two, then I'm going down to Brecon because I need new bowstring." Kili mumbles around a mouthful of pancakes, waving his fork absent-mindedly, and he continues babbling about some archery competition at Dimrill Dale that he wants to enter but apparently there's restrictions on the bloody bowstrings and Fili loses interest about halfway through Kili's tangent. Thorin just nods in acknowledgement and genuine interest (as far as Fili can tell) in all the right places, until Kili eventually reaches the end of his impromptu story.

"Alright. Make sure you take your bloody wallet with you this time, eh?" Thorin shoots a grin Kili's way, and he ducks his head in mild embarrassment.

"What about you, Fili?" Thorin turns his attention to his eldest nephew with a long suffering sigh that doesn't go unnoticed by Fili, who shrinks back into his seat ever so slightly.

"Dunno." Fili shrugs, chewing repeatedly for longer than he has to. He shrugs again after a moment, and spears another rolled-up pancake, wanting the conversation to move _away_ from him.

"You could meet me in Brecon later?" Kili suggested, feeling the awkward tension settling over them like a heavy blanket. Fili knows Kili hates it when Thorin and him start butting heads, so he tries to diffuse the situation for his brother's sake at least.

"Maybe." Fili nods once in acknowledgement, but says no more. He really doesn't want to do _anything_, Fili thinks, but he knows Thorin is running out of patience with him, and he should be doing _something_. He probably should go into Brecon and see if he could get a part-time job, at least. He finished his college course last year, a two year equine science introductory course that had been pretty interesting, when Fili had actually showed up. But now he seemed at a dead end. University was an option (and one that Thorin kept mentioning), but Fili just didn't want to go. He just didn't _want_ to do anything.

But Fili knows how it'll work: just because he _should_, doesn't mean he _will_.

Kili excuses himself, claiming that he has to go and get ready for college, but Fili hears the strain in his voice and sees the tautness around his eyes and knows that's not his real reason. He hates the aggro, the stupid built up wall between Fili and Thorin that nobody really knows where it came from. Nobody really knows how to get rid of it either. And that hurts Fili more than he'd ever admit.

When Kili disappears out of the kitchen and out of earshot, he knows exactly what Thorin will say.

"Have you thought any more about uni?"

And normally, his answer was a straight and simple 'no', but not today.

"Yeah."

Thorin looks up then, curiosity piqued. This makes a change.

"There's a course I want to do. Equine Agri-science, it's for three years." Fili starts, warily. Thorin nods, encouraging him on.

"It's not.. expensive, I don't-"

"Money's no object here, Fili. Don't worry about that. Where is it?" Thorin cuts him off with a wave of his hand, eyes bright with interest, but his smile falters when he sees Fili all but shrink back into his seat when he asks where.

"It's… it's in Auckland." Fili says, and closes his eyes. Dead silence fills the room, and Fili wishes he hadn't said a thing. He wishes the ground would just swallow him up.

He wishes he'd never left Auckland in the first place.

"Fili." He hears Thorin speak after what felt like far too long, voice already taking on that tone where he's about to say 'no', and Fili swears he can hear the disappointment in his words already. He opens his eyes and looks up nonetheless. Thorin is looking at him with disdain, brow furrowing slightly as his eyes narrow.

"Why?" Thorin asks, "Why do you want to go _back_ there?"

Fili doesn't know. He just looked up the course one night, found it was in Auckland and was filled with a weird nostalgic longing for home. But his home isn't there anymore. It burnt down, ten years ago, and it took his parents with it. He feels the familiar burn of tears and clamps his eyes shut again, concentrating on his breathing. In, _two, three, four_- out. He repeats the mantra to himself until the sudden flare of nostalgia, along with a heavy-hearted longing, slowly dissipate.

He hears the scraping of chair legs along the smooth tiles, then footsteps moving away- no, _towards_ him, and then they stop, right next to him. It's not until Thorin takes his trembling hands in his own in a rare moment of fleeting sympathy and kneels beside him that Fili opens his eyes, but even then, his gaze stays rooted to the floor. He doesn't want to look at him. He knows he'll break.

"Fili, look at me." Thorin tugs on his hands gently, coaxing him. Fili does as he's told, eventually, and looks his uncle dead in the eyes.

"I miss it." He states simply. "I miss Auckland. The city. It's so busy, and vibrant and full of life and… and it's just so _fucking_ bleak and dead here and there's nothing to distract me and _I'm sick of it_!"

Words come tumbling out and Fili doesn't mean for half of them to, but they do and he can't stop it, so he carries on. He goes through _everything_.

He carries on until he's a complete fucking mess in Thorin's arms, chest heaving with rattling sobs and pent up anger at everything over the past ten years that he can remember, because Mahal knows he's tried to forget most of it.

When he finally stops crying, he feels absolutely exhausted. There's no fight left in him, and he can barely feel the cold from the tiles or the warmth of Thorin at his side. There is, however, a sharp, shooting pain in his chest, and he feels like he wants to cough, so he does, but then he can't stop. Violent coughing forces him to lurch forward onto his hands and knees, and he can feel the hot sting of tears again, and he's so _sick_ of feeling so helpless, and it doesn't help that Thorin has to fucking _hold him up_ because he can't even support himself anymore.

Eventually, the coughing subsides, and he sits back, drawing his hand away from his mouth. He sees a flash of red in his palm, and it feels hot and sticky, and there's a familiar coppery tang in the back of his burning throat.

"Fili? Drink something, some water?" Thorin's words bring Fili back to his fraying senses and he nods frantically, a choked sob forcing its way out of his throat. He curls his bloodied hand into a fist so that Thorin can't see. He doesn't want any more attention, not now.

_Mahal_, he just wants to tell Thorin to piss off and leave him alone, but he knows that would do neither of them any favours, so he keeps quiet, sits with his back against one of the kitchen counters and sips gingerly at the water that Thorin hands him.

"I need to go to work." Thorin crouches down so that he's eye level with Fili again, but Fili doesn't meet his gaze. He just nods, teeth nibbling the edge of the glass. Thorin doesn't _need_ to go to work, Fili thinks scornfully, he's got enough money stored away to live forever and a day in total luxury. He just works because he doesn't want to face him. Thorin doesn't want to be reminded of everything that's happened, to his sister and his friend, and to his beloved nephew. Fili almost smiles cruelly at the thought and he doesn't know why.

"Will you be okay?" Fili hears Thorin press on, and he nods again, moving to press the cold glass against his forehead. The pain in his chest has reduced to a dull burn now, but Fili's not going to mention that.

Thorin sighs, feeling like he's already lost this battle, so he retreats and leaves Fili alone, despite the niggling feeling that he won't, in fact, be okay.

_June 8__th__ 2012_  
_ I don't feel right_  
_ - Fili_


	3. Chapter 3

_[Not coming into work today. Think you can hold the fort? – T]_

Thorin presses send, and then sits on the immaculately white sofa situated in the main room, just off the foyer, and waits for a reply. The phone buzzes less than thirty seconds later.

_[Sure. Boys okay? – D]_

_[Tell you later. – T]_

Thorin sets the phone down on the coffee table and puts his feet up, flicking the TV onto a rugby game. It's Ospreys vs Scarlets, so Thorin settles down to watch, sort of hoping for an Ospreys victory, even if he was never going to admit that. Dwalin was a Scarlets lad, and he was loathe to let Kili get wind of his favour of the rival team, because the little shit _would_ tell Dwalin.

He's in his own company for the most part of forty minutes, then Kili dashes through, calling out his goodbyes and grabbing his wallet before he steps outside and shuts the front door behind him. For a moment, Thorin wonders where his eldest is, and has a mind to see if he's still lying on the kitchen floor. The half-time whistle blows, and Thorin gets up to refill his coffee and maybe find some Doritos for the second half, that is, if Kili hasn't snatched them all.

He finds a bag of unopened Doritos, makes a noise of mild surprise and picks them up, waiting for the kettle to finish boiling. Fili has evidently moved somewhere else, and Thorin hopes he's gone back to sleep because the lad looks fucking awful.

"I thought you were working."

Ah. Fili.

Thorin glances over his shoulder, and sure enough, his nephew is stood there looking absolutely _shattered_, red-eyed and ragged. Thorin notices he looks so much older than his twenty years with his hunched shoulders and white-knuckle fists, the tight lines around his eyes; distrust and suspicion rolling off him in waves, he stands with his feet close together and appears to make himself look as small as possible, like a _child_. And Thorin is not the kindhearted sort, but even he feels a pang of sympathy, sharp and short, but enough to make him seriously consider sending Fili back to Auckland if that would make him even the slightest bit happier. Mahal, he doesn't think he's seen a proper smile on Fili's face for _years_.

It doesn't help that every time Thorin sees Fili, he expects to be greeted by the boy with the bright eyes and the impish grin that screams mischief, the hair that resembles a bird's nest and muddy knees and scraped elbows to boot. That was the Fili he knew and loved.

But Thorin knows that time goes on and people change and, _Mahal_, did Fili change.

He almost doesn't recognize his nephew anymore. Fili's hair is lank and dark, not like the rich honey it used to be. His eyes seem more black than blue now and he suspects that's largely due to the constant shadows around his eyes from lack of sleep. He doesn't smile, or if he does, it's only for Kili and Balin and sometimes Dwalin, and even then it's only for show. It never reaches his eyes. He doesn't even laugh, and Fili's laugh is a noise he's missed for a long time now.

Thorin takes a few more moments to look over Fili, before turning back to making his coffee. If he looks at him any longer, he'll be buying a plane ticket to Auckland just to get rid of the fucking Mahal-forsaken sight.

"Took the day off." Thorin answers Fili's question eventually in a deadpan tone, stirring the contents of the mug with the boiled water.

"Why? I'll be fine." Fili's response is harsh, knife-edged, almost desperate. It's like he wants to be left alone. Thorin thinks he probably does.

"You're not okay." Thorin answers, keeping his tone as flat as possible. He doesn't want Fili to know exactly how much he's concerned about him right now.

"Thorin, I haven't been okay for the past fucking _year_. It's just one of those days. I'll be fine!" Fili argues his point, and Thorin knows that he's not going to drop it anytime soon.

"Well, tough shit, Fili, I already took the day off." Thorin puts the milk back in the fridge, raising an eyebrow at the misprinted date. He hears Fili stomp off then, boots pounding on the laminate outside the kitchen and fading down the corridor.

"Well, I'm going out!" Fili calls, and then the front door slams. Thorin doesn't even bother to go after him. Fili does as Fili will, and Thorin knows that by forcing Fili into a corner, he'll only make their already strained relationship even worse.

**oOo**

It's a mild enough day outside, Fili realises, stomping down the gravel-lined driveway to his car, hitting the button to unlock it before clambering into the driver's seat. He slams the door shut, turns the key in the ignition and floors it out of the drive and onto the main road, gunning 80mph before long. He doesn't care. No-one drives around the Beacons at this time of morning.

He reaches Brecon in just under thirty minutes, parks as close as he can to the doctors surgery, turns the ignition off and sits there. His hands are still on the wheel in a white-knuckle grip. Fili knows there's something wrong with him. He knows he should go and find out what it is.

In the end, he goes to the pub and orders a pint. Then he finishes it and orders another. And another. And another. And it turns into a clockwork motion that goes on and on until the bartender simply refuses to serve him, by which point Fili doesn't even know what time it is. He's not _drunk_, he just feels a little lightheaded, that's all. But the bartender will have none of it, so Fili takes himself off to sulk alone in a corner booth, fingers drumming on a sticky pub table in endless rhythm, and he lets the repetitive tapping fill his hazy mind and drown out his troubles.

It's not until he hears a familiar Irish accent disrupting his empty mindset that he realises someone has apparently recognized him. He looks up, eyes narrowing as his vision keeps moving of its own accord, blurring and falling out of sync with what his mind can see. He eventually recognizes the face as Bofur, with the kindly eyes and the messy black hair tied back into a rough ponytail and a thick black beard covering a weather-worn face. Fili can see Bofur's lips moving, but no sound is reaching his ears clearly, no matter how much he tries to concentrate. He feels himself slumping forwards and pushes himself back, hands gripping the table for stability. He's vaguely aware that Bofur is now standing, and is pulling him up, and Fili doesn't even care enough to fight back, so he lets Bofur drag him out and into his own busted up, mustard-coloured Fiat outside.

Fili realises they're moving, and it's a familiar road they're travelling on, and then he remembers Bofur is probably taking him home, so he makes a noise of protest and the car slows.

"If—if you take…. me, to _Thorin_," Fili slurs, "I am going to- to _fucking…_ punch him."

Fili feels like he's being ignored for a moment or two, and tries to pull himself upright so he can see where the fuck he is and-

The car stops. He can just about turn his heavy head to look at Bofur, who he finds is regarding him with a look akin to pity. Fili hates it.

"D-don't look at me like… like that." Fili growls, head falling forward into his hands.

"Kid, you need to sort yourself out." he hears Bofur murmur, most likely to himself, and then he feels the car driving on, past his house and down into the valley, and that's all he sees before he falls into an endless dark.

**oOo**

_[You seen Fi in Brecon today? – T]20:58_

_[Not today, why? – D]20:58_

_[He's not come home. – T]20:59_

_[When did he go out? I'll get the lads looking for him? – D]20:59_

_[Early morning. Please.]21:00_

Dwalin frowns at the bright screen, Thorin's last text setting him on edge. He always signs off with a 'T', always. And he never willingly asks for help. _Ever_.

Dwalin shakes his head and looks up, seeing Balin sitting in the armchair with a book perched in one hand, but from the awkward tilt of his head and irrationally fast page-turning, Dwalin guesses his brother is trying to divulge some information from his various mutters in response to Thorin's unusually frantic texts.

"It's Fili, isn't it?" Balin asks then, just after Dwalin stands and turns the TV off, still smarting at the Scarlets loss against the Ospreys earlier. Dwalin doesn't even have to say anything. Balin _bloody well_ knows it's Fili.

"He went out early morning, still hasn't come back." Dwalin peers at the clock hanging solemnly above the old, unused fireplace, ticking away dutifully. Just gone nine, with the sun only now beginning to set seeing as it's June.

"I'm gonna phone th' lads an' get some of us out there lookin', Fili will only land himself in trouble again."

"I think people need to trust him a little more." Balin sighs wearily, putting the book down on the coffee table in front of him. He removes his spectacles and rubs the bridge of his nose where they pinched, leaving deep red ruts.

"Kid can't be trusted." Dwalin replies gruffly, not in the mood to argue over Fili's wellbeing.

"You don't mean that. You know him just as well as I do. He's a good lad, has always been-" Balin stands up, fingers clenching in frustration. "He's just… Thorin's attitude doesn't _help_, Dwalin. I don't understand why you encourage it."

"He needs to grow up."

"Yes! But is _abandoning_ him the way to do it?"

Dwalin sighs, and thinks about his answer. He knows why Thorin is the way he is with Fili. He understands. At least, he thinks he does.

"It's how Thorin grew up, after his parents… y'know." Dwalin murmurs lowly, loud enough for Balin to hear. He considers arguing Thorin's side, seeing as he's not here, but then decides against it. He fucking _knows_ Thorin's in the wrong, but it's not his place to say.

"And look how well that turned out for everybody." Balin shakes his head in despair as he moves to grab his coat. "Let's go."

They spend the next hour searching the wild hills of the Beacons in Dwalin's 4x4, fearing a repeat of Fili's last escapade, six years ago. Remembering Fili, broken and bloody at the bottom of a cliff had Balin shuddering at the thought of finding something not so dissimilar tonight. It's not until they get a call from Thorin, past ten, that they learn that Fili is safe and sound at Bofur's place, and Balin breathes a heavy sigh of relief as he climbs back into the car.

Dwalin finishes talking to Thorin and gets into the driver's seat, but doesn't turn the engine on. Balin knows he's feeling rough after that scare.

"We have to do something." Dwalin admits after a few minutes, resting his forehead on the top of the steering wheel.

"I can't find him like that again, Dwalin." Balin adds, wearily, voice growing thin. "Fili doesn't deserve the things life throws his way sometimes. Not in the least."

"Neither does Thorin."

"Aye, lad. Neither does Thorin." Balin agrees quietly, giving Dwalin's shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Let's go home. Get some sleep. I have a feeling we've some conversations to be havin' with Thorin."

Dwalin smiles weakly, and does as his brother tells him.

**oOo**

"Is he back yet? Please tell me he's back-" Kili comes crashing through the front door after his impromptu search of Brecon, soaked from the recent downpour. He looks absolutely shattered and Thorin pulls him inside, takes his coat off and tells him to go and get changed, his tone leaving no room for argument, but Kili doesn't move. He just stands there, eyes wide and brimming with unshed tears, wet hair plastered to his forehead, looking a damn sight worse than he did when he got home a few hours ago, and Thorin almost feels angry at Fili for making this happen.

"Uncle, _please_, just tell me!"

"He's safe. Bofur found him. He's staying there for the night; give him some peace and quiet, eh?" Thorin mumurs, smoothing Kili's messy hair out of his face. Kili lets out a choked sob, and buries his face in Thorin's coat, clutching the lapels like a frightened kid. Thorin lets him, his arms hold Kili tight and he tries to reassure his youngest nephew, but he knows he's not really listening.

"He'll be okay, lad. We all will." Thorin says, and Kili thinks it sounds like he's trying to convince himself, but he says nothing and just thinks of how much he wants his brother back.

He doesn't want the empty shell that walks and talks like a robot and smiles on command and feels nothing other than his own grief, nor the thin disguise that makes him pancakes and gives half-arsed one-liners - they were useless to him, little more than distractions to try and fill the empty space next to his heart where he knows his brother should be.

No. Kili wants his _brother_.


	4. Chapter 4

_There's smoke curling around his face and he can't breathe, the acrid stench is burning his throat and making his eyes sting with tears. It's horrible and stifling and he hates it but he can't get away. He tries to find a way out but he can only trip and stumble around blindly, feeling for something to hold onto but it seems like everything he lays his hands on is turning to ash and slipping through his fingers uselessly. He cries out, but the smoke starts to claw its way down into his lungs and he chokes. There's no-one there to help him. No-one's coming. He can feel the heat of the flames licking the hem of his shirtsleeves, slowly climbing higher and higher, and he wants to cry. He wants his dad, or his mum, but they're not there, and he's stuck with a crying baby brother who's clutching at him and screaming at him and he doesn't even know what he's saying. Suddenly, Kili goes silent and walks forwards, and he can't stop him; it's like grabbing air. Kili seems to fade under his touch and _he can't stop him _and he walks straight into the flames and he can hear him _screaming_ and he can't do anything-_

Fili awakes with a choked sob, eyes flashing open. The bright light flooding in through the window is fucking _painful_, and he shuts his eyes almost immediately. The nightmare still lingers on the edge of his vision and it won't go away; he can still feel the flames licking at his sleeves, but now they're all around him and- _Mahal, stop._ He buries his face in the pillow to try and calm down but the pillow, he notices with a jarring realisation, doesn't smell at all familiar. It's… _plain_, if he can call it that. He's not at home. Fili can feel his head pounding already, and he vaguely recalls a blur of drink and then sitting in the bar alone (that was a new low) and... nothing after that. At least he doesn't feel sick. Yet.

Fili tries to move his body, which feels oddly heavy, and then he realises that he's wearing the clothes he was wearing yesterday, bar the boots, which somebody had clearly taken off and set neatly by the door. Looking around, the room is completely unfamiliar, foreign. He feels that familiar jolt of fear run through his bones, and he braces himself.

His heart-rate goes through the roof, he can feel it, he can _hear_ it. In fact, it's all he can hear. And then when that subsides, he feels so _sick_ and he can't _breathe_ and a cold sweat breaks out and he's shaking and he's alone and he doesn't know where he is and he can't hold himself together and he's on the verge of screaming-

"Lad! Lad, yer alright!" Fili can hear Bofur's familiar Irish lilt, loud and clear, but the panic instinct is louder and stronger. It's not until Bofur places a cold flannel on the back of his neck, and Fili immediately feels his nerves settling. It's odd, going from being completely whacked out in panic then coming back down to Earth in a few seconds. Fili still isn't used to it.

His breaths are short, hard gasps for air now, but at least he knows where the hell he is. He remembers Bofur, the fucking mustard-yellow Fiat… yeah, he's at Bofur's place. And then his stomach seems to lurch as a new wave of fear rears its ugly head, and he's almost in tears and-

"_Kili_- Kili, does he know? Oh, Mahal, he'll be fucking _freaking_ the hell out- I've got to- and Thorin, Bofur, you have to get me back-" Fili blurts out suddenly, thinking faster than he can speak. His mouth feels so dry and his head feels like it's about to explode and he just needs to get home and tell them he's okay-

"They _know_, Fili, I phoned them last night. You were in no state to go home. Here, hold this-" Bofur stops him, crouching beside him and motioning to the flannel at the back of his neck which Fili reaches up to hold, "-old trick, Bifur used to have plenty o' attacks when he was younger, always calmed him right down-" Bofur smiles, bright and friendly, there's no doubt or judgement behind his eyes, and Fili almost returns the smile, but then he has the crippling realisation that Thorin must be absolutely livid with him and he groans, head falling forward into his free hand.

"Thorin's gonna be fucking _pissed_." he mumbles, and he hears Bofur chuckle quietly.

"No, lad, he'll just be glad to have you home." the toy-maker fixes him with a steady gaze, as if to say 'I'm right, and you know it', and Fili nods. He is right.

Or at least, Fili hopes he is. The alternate scenario doesn't bear thinking about.

"Here. You're gonna want this, I reckon." Bofur sets down a pack of paracetamol and a glass of water on the bedside table. "There's breakfast on the go if you want some before you go back." Bofur adds kindly, before he leaves the room.

Fili feels strangely content. It's been a while since anyone spoke to him like that. Normal, without hesitation or doubt or any kind of suspicion, and that made Fili happier than he'd been in a little while. He puts the flannel to one side to take a paracetamol, and swallows it down with the water which he's glad of when his mouth doesn't feel like the fucking Sahara anymore.

Fili takes a proper look around the room when he's done. It's silly, having to chew out every single detail until it's all but engraved into the back of his eyelids, but he knows it'll help him calm down. It's small, but homely and full of knick-knacks and old children's toys and Fili can't help but wonder if he'd stayed in this room before, a long time ago. The yellow paint is fading under the sunglare through the window, and everything seems covered in dust and stuck in some bygone time.

Eventually, Fili gets up, pulls on his boots and finds his way to the kitchen. It's an excessive kitchen, in typical farmhouse style, with a huge table in the middle. He recognizes Bifur and Bombur, and waves an awkward good-morning to them, to which they reply with grins and in Bombur's case, a verbal 'good morning'. Fili can't help but feel a little embarrassed; he can only guess how bad he looked when Bofur brought him in last night.

"I, uh- I'm sorry, for all that, last night. Must've looked… bad." Fili mumbles gingerly, hands twitching uselessly at his sides. He feels like he should say more, but he doesn't know what exactly he _can_ say.

Thankfully, Bofur steps in.

"S'alright lad, we all have days like that." he comments, plating up some bacon and egg on toast. "Get that down ya. Trust me, you'll feel better for it." he hands the plate to Fili, who takes it and sits at the table. He eats in morose silence, chewing everything for far too long in the midst of his distractions.

Bofur eventually realises he's not going to get any more words out of Fili today, so he drives him home and sees him to the gate of Thorin's driveway, where he gives him a reassuring pat on the shoulder and a bright smile, before turning back to his old Fiat.

Fili watches him drive off, and he feels lonely again, like the warmth from before has suddenly left his bones. Nevertheless, he does what he always does, and he shrugs it off and puts on a front and turns towards the house, and there's a part of him that's telling him to run because Thorin is going to be _so fucking pissed_ and it won't be worth the aggro he gets if he walks back in now, but he ignores it and makes for the front door.

He's better than that. He's not a coward.

Just as he's about to turn the doorknob, it's torn from his reach and a blur of black and blue flings itself bodily at him and it's all Fili can do to catch it and stop the both of them toppling over. He breathes in and he smells the familiar scents, it's clear and fresh and it's _his brother_, and warmth floods through his bones again and almost masks the pain in his chest that still hasn't gone away. He's happy. _Happier_. Fili hugs Kili tighter and he rests his chin on his little brother's head, like he always does.

Fili stays like that for a few moments more, finding a deeply satisfying comfort in the fact that Kili is still _there_. He smiles properly, for what feels like the first time in years, and his face muscles actually _hurt_ at the motion, but he smiles nonetheless. Kili's _always_ there.

He hears heavy footsteps moving towards them, but they stop a few feet away. Fili doesn't even have to look up to know that Thorin's standing there; he does anyway, smile fading as quickly as it had appeared. He feels like he should apologise, explain what happened and try to clear the slate, but from Thorin's guarded stance and sincere expression, he guesses that Thorin isn't in the mood for explanations right now, so he keeps his mouth shut.

"Don't fucking do that to us, Fee. _Don't_." Fili hears Kili whimper, and he nods, letting go. Kili steps back, but doesn't let go of Fili just yet. Instead, he looks at him curiously, as if expecting a verbal answer.

"I won't."

Fili can't help that his voice falters pathetically under the weight of the lie, and he can't bear to see the disappointment that he will undoubtedly find if he meets Kili's gaze again, so he trains his eyes on the ground and walks past Thorin and into the house, the silence following him like an unwelcome ghost.

_June 9__th__ 2012  
i'm back, i guess. i don't even remember what happened last night. thorin's angry, i know he is. and kili too, a little. i think. i don't know. i hope not. i can deal with thorin - i always have, but not my little brother too._

_please.  
- Fili_

Fili doesn't leave his room for the rest of the day, he doesn't want to face anyone right now, but no-one makes the effort to come and see how he is either. That doesn't make him feel any better. He ends up filling just under ten pages of his journal with some rambles and odd pieces of information about various phobias that come to mind and doodles of people (Kili and Thorin, mostly. He can't help it – they're always there and on his mind, they're all he has left.) until he all but falls asleep at his desk, amongst all the Dimrill Dale College stationery.

It's not until Kili is frantically shaking him by the shoulder and calling his name that he jumps awake, eyes wide and nerves fraying at the sudden alarm bells ringing in his mind. Kili stops suddenly, eyes widening too as Fili turns to him with a, frankly, vehemently murderous expression and demands an explanation for the sudden awakening.

"Oh _shite_, Fili, I thought you'd done something really stupid and-" Kili breathes out, pinching the bridge of his nose to calm himself down. Fili feels bad then, and clasps his brother's arm securely.

"M'just tired." he reassures, and Kili nods, breathing starting to even out. "Did you want something?" Fili asks then, absently wondering why Kili chose now to come and pay him a visit. He almost hopes it's to see if he's okay.

"Thorin wanted me to let you know that dinner's almost ready if you want it. He says you can't bring it in here though, you, uh, gotta eat at the table tonight." Kili relays the message, voice dropping towards the end to the point where Fili was struggling to hear exactly what his brother was saying. He receives the message nonetheless, and feels a little disappointed. Thorin always reverts to treating him like a fucking _child_, and Fili hates it.

"Okay then." Fili shrugs, and absent-mindedly begins chewing on a pen. A rare, awkward silence fills the space between Fili and his brother after that. The elder elects to ignore that, however, and gets up off the chair to stretch his aching legs that have been cramped under the desk for near enough six hours now. They're going to hurt for a while, he thinks. He drops the pen back on the desk and walks over to his bed, setting his alarm for 9:00am tomorrow morning, remembering (however faintly) what Bofur had told him last night.

Fili needs to sort himself out. He's spent the last three years wallowing in self pity and that was doing fuck all for him or anyone else. He's determined he's going to get better, and he's going to start now. Because if he leaves it any longer, he thinks, it might just be too late.

"What's this?" Fili hears Kili ask after setting the alarm and placing the clock back where it belongs, and he glances over. He feels the sharp pang of fear shoot through his chest like he's just been shot, and he all but flings himself off the bed and over to his desk where Kili is about to _open the fucking journal,_ and he slams it shut just before Kili can turn the page fully.

"No!" Fili hisses, staring at his pale hands splayed across the front of the journal, keeping it closed from Kili's keen eyes. He feels Kili step away from him, and all he wants to do is reach out and tell him he's sorry for scaring the everloving shit out of him and he didn't mean to do what he just did but he can't bring himself to even _look_ at his brother. So he keeps quiet.

"Okay. _Okay_-" Fili hears Kili say, in the most ridiculously placating tone he's ever heard, and it grinds on his every nerve instead of calming him down. "Sorry, Fee, I'm _sorry_! I didn't know-"

"Just go. I'll be down for dinner soon." Fili cuts him off, his tone entirely devoid of any emotion. He stays rooted to the spot, hands firmly clamped down on the grey leather of the journal until he hears Kili's footsteps fading out of earshot down the hallway. Only then does Fili let his guard down. His shoulders fall and he drops his hands to his sides and breathes out heavily, feeling cold all over despite the burning in his chest. That's not going to arouse suspicion _at all_, Fili thinks sarcastically, Kili's going to be wondering now, and he'll get too close and _he'll find out _and-

He stops his thoughts and tries to keep his mind clear so he can actually think, and then Fili realises he's shaking, and he feels so _bloody stupid_ again and he just collapses into his chair, biting back the urge to scream and rant and rave until his throat is red raw and he can't speak.

Slowly, he calms down. He repeats his breathing mantra over and over until his heart rate is normal again.

And then he picks up a pen and begins to write on a clean page:

_June 9__th__ 2012_

_To my little brother,_

_ I'm tired, Kili. All the time. I don't even have the energy to do anything anymore, least of all get myself out of this pit I've pretty much condemned myself to, however pathetic that sounds. I know it's difficult for you to understand why I am the way I am, I mean, even I don't know why I do the things I do sometimes. But if I ever, __ever__ do anything to hurt you, Kili, you have to tell me. I'm your brother, and I always will be, but sometimes you can help me more than I can help me. _

_I love you, little brother, even though you can be an utter pain in the arse (and I'll admit I am too – a lot) and sometimes you just don't think about things, and I only get annoyed at you because you could do so much better for yourself, but that's just me being the annoying big brother I'm supposed to be, although I know I haven't been much of one lately._

_I'm sorry._

_ - Fili_

He blinks a few times, feeling the familiar burning of unshed tears, and roughly wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his old hoodie, before grabbing a luminous green post-it note and scribbling on it. He sticks it on the clean page opposite the letter he just wrote, and leaves the journal open, knowing that Kili will find it. Somehow.


	5. Chapter 5

"Did you tell him?" Thorin asks as he plates up their dinner, hearing Kili approaching. He knows it's Kili because his footsteps are heavier and surer than Fili's. Always have been, Thorin remembers.

"Y-yeah." Kili stammers lightly, voice wavering, and it doesn't go unmissed by Thorin who turns to look at him curiously.

"He's not coming down?" Thorin presses, eyes narrowing in suspicion as his nephew walks over to the table, slumping in his seat with an odd unsettledness about him. Thorin doesn't receive an answer, so he strides over to the table, plates in hand, and sets them down.

"Hey, what's rattled your cage now? Kili?"

"Oh, he's just, uh, tired." Kili waves Thorin off and pulls his own plate towards him, digging into his food before Thorin has a chance to interrogate him because, Mahal, he knows Thorin _will_ and he knows he'll give in in about five seconds.

"Tired." Thorin repeats, sounding incredibly unconvinced. He nods and sits down, then says no more.

Kili finishes his food first and excuses himself, knowing that Thorin isn't going to let him take Fili's food up to him because that would just be giving in, _obviously_.

Instead, he goes up to his own room and pulls out his laptop. It'll give him something to do for a bit, because he fucking _knows _he'll end up in Fili's room at some point tonight, after what happened earlier. He's not going to leave it hanging in the air like that. It'll just eat away at the both of them until someone gives in and ends up doing something stupid to get the other's attention. He doesn't fancy letting it go that far again.

As the laptop slowly whirs to life, Kili can't help but think of Fili's face when he saw him opening the book. That was pure, unbridled fear. It was awful, and now it makes Kili's chest feel tight with guilt every time he remembers it. He wishes he hadn't tried to open the fucking book in the first place.

The laptop's start-up noise startles Kili out of his thoughts, and he logs in, deft fingers blurring across the keyboard in familiar motions. Once he's in, he tries to distract himself with the stupidity he finds on Facebook, but then he's on Twitter not long after, and both fail to amuse him for longer than ten minutes at the most, so he ends up digging through his program files and finds the base game of Sims 3 and decides to play that instead, fully acknowledging the fact that he is eighteen and now classed as an adult.

He barely makes it past building a house for his oddball family he just made before he gets bored and quits.

He can't stop thinking about what happened with Fili. Glancing at the clock on his bedside table, he sees it's been almost an hour since he came upstairs after tea, and now he's wondering whether to go and apologise to Thorin for being so rude at dinner or go and apologise (again) to his brother for sticking his nose where he shouldn't. Either way, he has some grovelling to do. But Kili just wants to crawl under the covers and go to sleep and not wake up for a day or two.

In the end, he finds himself knocking gingerly on Fili's door not thirty minutes later, and waits for a reply. He waits for a minute, and just as he's about to turn and leave, he decides that he's not going to let Fili's fucking mood swings get the better of him. Kili opens the door and steps in, bracing himself.

The room is oddly still, that's the first thing Kili notices. His brother appears to be fast asleep, clothed in nothing but an old pair of plaid pyjama trousers, sprawled across his bed with an arm draped over the side, fingers almost touching the floor. Kili sighs, and is about to walk back out, when he sees Fili's journal left wide open on a page with a post-it note sticking out garishly in the gloom. A part of him wants to go and look, but after what happened earlier, he feels almost _scared_ to go any further.

Since when was he scared of his own brother?

Kili shakes it off and moves towards the book against his own better judgement, and when he sees the post-it note, he can't help the confused frown.

_KILI. READ THIS._

_AND I TRUST YOU NOT TO READ ANYTHING ELSE. PLEASE._

_- FI_

There's a hastily drawn arrow pointing to the opposite page, and Kili sits down to read. And when he's done, he's not sure whether to go and wake Fili up and scream at him for being such an idiot and not telling him sooner or to just sit there and stare at Fili's harsh-edged script, reading the lines over and over until they're all but engrained into his mind.

Eventually, he doesn't get to pick either option, because Fili's woken up.

"Kee?" he hears his brother say quietly, and he almost crumbles at Fili using his nickname. He breathes in deeply and turns to face his brother, wringing his hands together. Why is he even nervous? Kili tries to shake it off, but he gets the feeling that something's wrong. _Very_ wrong.

"I didn't mean to- to scare you. Earlier. Sorry." Fili murmurs lowly, looking a lot more ragged than Kili had first thought. His ribs were sticking out garishly, and his collarbone too was jutting out to a point where Kili was sure that it wasn't normal, and he just looked completely exhausted.

"Fucking- Fili, there's _nothing_ on you." Kili starts forward, waving off Fili's apology as he approaches. And then Fili laughs brokenly, and he can see his ribs fucking _moving_ and Mahal, that should not be happening-

"S'alright, Kee, I've been pretty skinny for a while. Nothing new." Fili pats his belly with a smirk that quickly fades when he realises Kili isn't seeing anything funny about this situation. Sighing, he shrugs. What can he say? He _is_ losing a lot of weight, but he has been for a while. It's not his fault nobody bothered to notice until now, is it?

Fili then makes the mistake of taking an unnecessarily deep breath, and that aggravates the pain in his lung and he can't hold down the cough, and then he just can't stop, until Kili hits him solidly on the back.

"Ju-just stress." Fili wheedles out between gasps, trying to place a reason for Kili to grasp at, but that doesn't do much either. He's still staring at him like he's just sprouted another head.

"Alright, if you're just going to stare at me like that until the cows come home I'm kicking you out." Fili snaps, raking a hand through his hair and turning back to his bed. He's getting tetchy and short-tempered and he knows it, but fucking hell, everybody just really knows how to aggravate him these days.

"Alright!" Kili diffuses the situation effortlessly, and sits in Fili's desk chair. "I'm just worried."

"Don't be." Fili replies without missing a beat, like too many people have told him that before, but then he carries on, "I'm your big brother, I'm meant to worry about _you_, you tit."

"Are you okay though?" Kili finds himself asking after a few moments, without really thinking. The silence that follows is enough to make him wish he hadn't asked.

"Is anyone?" he hears Fili respond, and then he says no more.

"I'm asking _you_."

"And I'm telling you that _I'm fine_." Fili says with finality in his tone as climbs back into his bed, pulling the covers over him.

"Now you can either stay here and be quiet or get lost." Kili almost smiles at that.

"I'm still worrying." he admits quietly, not moving from his chair.

"Then tell me, o brother mine, what will give _you_ peace of mind so that _I_ may have some fucking peace to sleep tonight?"

Kili doesn't answer. Fili sighs and pulls himself to a sitting position, ignoring the pain that is flaring up in his chest again. He can see Kili is sitting awkwardly, shoulders hunched and knees pulled up to his chest, fingers gripping the arms of the chair so hard that his knuckles are a stark white in the gloom, and he can just about make out the tense lines around his eyes that only ever appear when he's truly worried. Fili feels bad for being such an arse to him then, and sighs.

"You can stay in here tonight if you want."

That's what they always used to do whenever one of them was ill or scared or worried. They'd just grab their duvets and pillows and crash by the side of the other's bed for the night. Knowing that there was someone there was enough to calm them down or cheer them up and get them off to sleep, even if it meant the poor sod on the floor had a fucking awful backache the next day.

And Kili's grin was a welcome sight in the gloom, Fili thought.


	6. Chapter 6

Thorin had a hard job trying to locate the exact whereabouts of his nephews the next morning. He has to go into work, and he would normally just leave the boys to it because, Mahal, they're legally adults (even if he doesn't remember that sometimes) and can bloody well take care of themselves. But with everything that's happened recently, he feels a little guilty if he just leaves without warning.

Such is the reason why he's currently wandering around his house at half eight in the morning, briefcase in one hand and iPhone in the other, RayBans perched on his head, carefully positioned so they weren't in danger of interfering with the immaculate hairdo, looking for his nephews.

He passes Fili's room, and he swears he can hear Kili's weird snuffling/snorting/snoring thing he does that nobody can quite explain the sound of because it's just _odd_. He frowns, knocks on the door quietly and opens it, only to be greeted with the sight of Fili sprawled out on his bed, pillow tucked under one arm and duvet thrown off to the side onto a heap which Thorin is sure he can see Kili's foot and possibly a nose sticking out of.

He can't help the ridiculous smile that follows.

Thorin exits the room, deciding that they'll have enough common sense to know where he's gone, and he'll only feel guiltier if he wakes them up than if he leaves them without notice. He makes his way downstairs and out of the house, getting into his car and making for his office in Brecon.

When he gets there, he finds Dwalin making himself at home in his office, feet up on his desk and slumped in his chair with a complete shit-eating grin on his face. It wouldn't look so ridiculous if it wasn't a fucking huge, Hell's Angel biker-looking bloke covered in tattoos on his neck and his arm, disappearing under hastily rolled-up shirtsleeves with a skinhead cut and questionable goatee.

"You're late, Mr Oakenshield." Dwalin states, chewing absently on a pen that Thorin hopes isn't his. He perches his RayBans on top of his head again (carefully), and fixes Dwalin with the most deadpan stare he can muster.

"I'm the boss, and I don't give two flying fucks-" Thorin deposits his briefcase on the table and slides his phone into his pocket before shoving Dwalin's legs roughly off the desk and telling him to piss off to his own workspace before he drop kicks him over there himself, "-and good morning."

"Mornin'. Boys alrigh'?"

"Better than they've been." Thorin answers after a moment of thought, a minute smile on his face as he sorts through fresh paperwork that Dwalin had apparently deposited on his desk before he arrived.

"Aw, lookit, Thorin Oakenshield can actually _smile_. Who knew?" Dwalin snorts, finishing his coffee.

"Do I pay you to make shitty one-liners all day?" Thorin quips, sorting through the papers without missing a beat.

Dwalin just laughs and turns to his own work, looking at the recent sales and stock imports of Durin & Sons.

He didn't exactly know what to expect after agreeing to work with Thorin, who'd inherited a seemingly hopeless jewellery shop in Brecon, of all places. Like anybody was going to travel there for a bunch of overpriced gold. He certainly wasn't expecting Thorin to single-handedly resurrect the business though, and it's doing incredibly well these days, in all fairness. Dwalin thinks it's mostly due to Thorin's find of the family treasure, the Arkenstone crystal. It was a gem, unlike any other. Highly sought after and incredibly limited, Thorin agreed to part with a small chunk of his family's legacy in return for millions, _billions_ of pounds, even. Not a bad deal, really, Dwalin thinks.

They'd got a good set-up going too; it was family owned and (mostly) family run. Balin handles the sales floor, because he's pretty much the only one with enough patience to actually deal with the custom. Dwalin manages the accounts and finances, seeing as he's the only one of them who ever bothered with maths. He's not all bad at it either. Gloin works as their jeweller, notes the true value of each precious stone and the metals, has a keen eye for rip-offs and generally is responsible for the pricing and evaluations. Dori is a particularly talented crafter; he's responsible for some of the most intricate designs on the shop floor, and deals with customizing jewellery for any customers so willing to pay the charge. And behind it all, Thorin keeps everything running. He holds meetings, wrangles deals and basically keeps Durin & Sons ticking over like a well-oiled machine.

Dwalin was just happy to see something good come out of the past few years.

"Fili doing alright now then?" Dwalin wonders aloud, over the clacking of the keyboard as he notes down the latest inbound accounts.

"Mhm." Thorin replies tersely, but the tense lines around his eyes suggest otherwise. Dwalin is reminded of Balin's words two nights ago, after their frantic searching. He decides now is just a good a time as any.

"You know, maybe we could trust the kid a bit more." Dwalin suggests.

"He's not a _kid_, Dwalin." Thorin replies, skirting around the question effortlessly.

"Really? Because you treat him like one sometimes."

"Sometimes he needs to learn-"

"And leaving him to his own devices completely is the best way about that, is it?" Dwalin cuts Thorin off gruffly, patience running at an all time low, even for him. Thorin doesn't reply immediately, and Dwalin can hear the shuffling as he drops papers onto the desks, then a defeated sigh.

"I don't know what to _do_."

"Stop being so bloody proud and ask for help then."

"Is this take a dig at Thorin day?"

"I can make it so."

"Fuck off."

Dwalin laughs and gets up to make them both another coffee. He's just about to walk through the doorway, when Thorin speaks again.

"Dwalin. Help."

Dwalin pauses mid-stride, not sure what he just heard. He glances over his shoulder to see Thorin staring at the desk with so much intensity that he's half-expecting the glass to suddenly shatter or melt or do something equally alarming. When Dwalin says nothing, Thorin looks up; eyes steely with what Dwalin hopes is determination, otherwise the phrase 'if looks could kill' springs to mind.

"I'm asking you for _help_."

**oOo**

It's the buzzing of the alarm that jolts Kili awake, and then he finds himself smothered in two duvets, a multitude of pillows that definitely aren't his and he can't remember exactly where he is. So, naturally, he freaks out and sends the mountain of bedclothes flying in every direction as he scrambles for freedom, gasping and babbling to himself in mild confusion.

Kili eventually recognises the room as Fili's, then finds himself wondering where the hell his brother is because he's definitely not in his bed and as far as Kili can see, not in the room either, which is pretty odd because Fili does not wake up early, ever-

"Morning." Fili's voice stops him in his tracks, and he looks up to see his brother leaning casually in the doorway, showered and dressed and it's _nine in the morning_ and Kili's confusion must clearly be evident on his face because Fili's lips are twitching dangerously in amusement and he really looks like he's trying not to make a quip in Kili's direction.

"I've got things to do and places to be." Fili claps a hand on the doorframe, ready to turn around and leave. "And you've got college in half an hour." he adds with a smirk before leaving without waiting for Kili's reply.

Kili almost feels offended, but then realisation sets in that he has college _in half an hour_ and he's still in bed. So he pushes the thought to the back of his mind and flings himself bodily out of the door and hurtles down the stairs towards the kitchen, just as Fili shuts the front door behind him.

**oOo**

It's far too hot outside, Fili thinks as he drives into Brecon (apparently someone had the decency to retrieve his car after the fiasco of two nights ago) and finds the nearest parking space. It's far enough outside of the town so that it'll give him a good five minute walk to calm down because he's _really_ beginning to freak out now and he's not even in sight of the surgery. Mahal knows how he's going to take it when he actually gets there.

Fili turns the engine off and takes a deep breath, but that only sends him into yet another coughing fit. Groaning, he leans his head against the steering wheel and braces himself. He has to go and sort himself out like Bofur told him. He has to start being a proper brother to Kili, and less of a bloody nuisance for Thorin at least.

He has to.

Getting out of the car, he slams the door shut, locks it, and begins the five minute walk into the town centre, hoping that the stabbing pains in his chest will go away. It's a pathetic kind of hope. He _knows_ they're not going to go away because they've been getting steadily worse over the past week.

After writing his letter to Kili, he phoned the surgery and booked an appointment for today. Then he'd sat down and compiled a list of everything that wasn't quite right with him, phobias and mental disorders aside, and it was a fairly extensive list by the time he finished.

So now Fili can't help the niggling anxiety that's looming over him like a raincloud, darker than ever, as he draws nearer and nearer to the surgery, looking as plain and unthreatening as it could possibly look. He feels almost stupid for making such a huge deal out of it, but he knows something's wrong.

He reaches the door and steps through it, waiting until it clangs shut behind him before he begins to walk to the reception desk, where he thinks his heart is about to hammer its way out of his own ribcage. He forces himself to breathe and waits as the person in front of him gives their name and their appointment slot, and then it's him who's giving the kindly lady behind the desk his name and time, and she tells him to go right on through because apparently he's a tad late. He manages a bashful smile and a muttering of thanks, before making his way to Dr. Mithrandir's room.

He probably could've gone to Oin, Fili thinks as he steps into the room, but then if it was something bad- no, he'd rather save himself the hassle. And Dr Mithrandir turns out to be a nice enough guy, who certainly looks far too old to be working but Fili's not going to mention that, and he has a tendency to mutter cryptically to himself while he works which is a little off-putting, Fili will admit. But nice enough.

He goes through all the routine questions, and Fili answers as honestly as he can, but doesn't miss the split-seconds in which there is concern evident in the old man's eyes. It sets him on edge, and by the end he's all but gritting his teeth and grinding out his answers in a ridiculously strained voice as he holds onto his seat with a white-knuckle grip in a bid to stop himself from leaping up and making a run for it.

But it seems this Mithrandir knows how to deal with him, because he suddenly changes the topic.

"It's a nice day out today, hm?" The aging doctor turn slightly in his office chair to glance out the window, through which far too much sun for Fili's liking is currently flooding through and spilling across the cerulean blue carpets and whitewashed walls, making them all way too fucking bright and he feels like the colours are trying to drill their way into his skull and it's becoming legitimately painful.

"Uh, yeah. If you like this sort of weather." Fili answers eventually, blinking rapidly as his eyes suddenly realise the alarming brightness of the room.

"Do you not?" Mithrandir turns to him, lips quirked upwards and Fili's not quite sure why, but he answers all the same.

"Not really. Too hot."

"Mhm." Mithrandir nods, and the quirked lips turn into something that Fili would call a knowing smile before he turns back to Fili properly.

"Are we ready to continue?" he asks, and Fili blinks in surprise, confused.

"Wha-"

"I was trying to distract you. It seems to have worked." Mithrandir nods to Fili's now unclenched fingers that are suddenly resting on top of his knees and not about to snap the chair in two. He doesn't know whether to feel thankful or annoyed that he was being so bloody obvious.

"Well, Fili, going by what you've said-" Mithrandir pulls his hastily scribbled notes towards him and peers over them for what must be the millionth time, Fili thinks, "I'm going to have to make an urgent referral."

What? Fili looks up suddenly, brow furrowing in downright confusion as a new wave of fresh, icy fear claws its way through his chest and he can feel his heart rate shooting up and Mahal, _not now_-

"A referral?" Fili breathes; surprised he hasn't completely lost his speech function.

Mithrandir simply nods, turning to his computer to put the referral through.

"A-are you sure? I mean, it doesn't… it doesn't feel _that_ bad? I mean-" Fili begins to babble helplessly, watching as Mithrandir's spider-like fingers skitter across the keys with no sign of stopping anytime soon.

"Fili, I have an idea of what might be wrong with you, but I'd like to get some firmer diagnosis than the one I can give you. You'll need a CT scan, but it has to be done quickly. Hence, the urgent referral. Then you'll come back to me and I'll tell you what you want to know." Mithrandir finishes typing and the printer whirs to life, and the room is filled with the gentle roll of the printer's whirring. After a few moments, Mithrandir walks to his printer and pulls out the freshly printed document, folds it neatly and walks back over to hand it to Fili with unmistakeable concern in his eyes.

"And though I can tell you what you want to know, I can't guarantee I'll be able to tell you what you want to hear."

"How- how soon?" Fili finally manages to get out; trying desperately to take in all the information that Mithrandir just threw at him and failing miserably. His mind was whirring along with the bloody printer, nothing was sinking in and he just couldn't place his thoughts and he's sure he's going to fucking pass out because his head is spinning along with his brain and-

"Tomorrow."


	7. Chapter 7

Fili ends up sitting on a bench in the local park, mulling over his thoughts until he can't stand it any longer and just chooses to stare at the pond instead. The ripples are oddly calming, and he finds his thoughts just disappear after a while. So with a clear head, he tries to think of what the hell he's going to tell Thorin.

And Kili.

He has to tell them.

The thought almost makes him feel sick, and he groans, burying his face in his hands. He just wants to go home and go to bed and not wake up for a few days, and hopefully whatever's wrong with him will just turn out to be a misunderstanding and he's actually fine but he knows that happy endings don't _exist_ in his world.

They never have done.

He drops his hands from his face and stares at the pond again, at the ripples, until he calms down properly. After a few moments more, Fili starts to map out Brecon in his mind and decide where he's going to go, because home definitely isn't on the list of places he wants to be right now.

If he leaves the park the way he came, he could drop by Bombur's bakery and get himself something to eat because he's bloody _starving_ after skipping his breakfast this morning. And it'll give him time to think about what he's going to tell Thorin. So that's exactly what he does.

It's not a long walk to Bombur's, then again, Fili thinks he could probably walk across the whole town in about twenty. He steps into the quaint shop with its window full of cakes and pastries and things that he remembers begging off Bombur as a kid, and manages the tiniest smile at the memory. The shop bell rings as the door swings open, and he hears Bombur call out a friendly 'hello!' from one of the backrooms, before emerging into the shop, behind the counter. His smile only widens when he sees that it's Fili.

"Lad, howya?" Bombur greets Fili, waving him over. Fili walks in, admiring the new selection of cakes that he vaguely remembers Bombur talking about not so long ago.

"So-so." Fili answers honestly, forcing his mouth into a grim smile as he glances up at Bombur. Bombur sighs, smile faltering.

"One of those days?" Bombur asks kindly, with no suspicion in his tone like Fili's come to expect from Thorin.

"I suppose." Fili shrugs. "But either way, I'm bloody starving. What do you recommend?" he quickly changes the topic and forces a grin, trying to alleviate the dark mood that's already beginning to descend upon his shoulders.

"Well, lad, a good old vanilla cupcake always works wonders on bad days." Bombur chuckles, nodding to the cupcake tray perched on top of the glass counter.

"You haven't stopped making those bear claws, have you?" Fili suddenly asks, after a moment of contemplation, and Bombur's face brightens immediately. He nods, and disappears into the bakery. He returns a few moments later with a pastry wrapped in a napkin and hands it to Fili.

"On the house." Bombur says with a wink and a grin, as Fili takes the pastry gratefully.

"You don't sell them?" Fili notes, digging into the bear claw eagerly. It's not much more than an irregular shaped lump of pastry that does kind of resemble a bear's paw, it's just covered in sticky honey. They were the only thing that Fili would eat at one point, until he made himself so sick that he couldn't touch them for months after. Thorin still finds it funny.

"Now and then. Nobody likes them quite like you though, laddie." Bombur laughs fondly as he brings out a fresh tray of Cornish pasties to put out.

"Hm. Fili nods, feeling content for the moment, the worries of what happened at the surgery flitting to the back of his mind. He stays there for a bit, talking to Bombur about this and that and he manages to apologise about six times about his impromptu stay at their house a few nights ago in the process.

Eventually, Fili finishes the pastry, mumbles a hurried goodbye to Bombur and walks out, deciding on the best path to take to Thorin's offices. They're right in the middle of the town centre, and they're not hard to miss. Glass walls and sleek monochrome (Fili swears down that Thorin is either colour-blind or just has a problem with monochrome), it stands out garishly amongst the old red brick and lumber shops of the old town. Fili thinks it looks awful, but he's not going to tell Thorin that in so many words.

As he descends the steps onto the main high street, he catches sight of the fucking awful office doors and stops dead, his feet unwilling to move. Fili can feel his heart starting to hammer in his chest again, and he feels cold to the bone and his head starts swimming and it's all he can do to hold onto the railings and hope to Mahal he doesn't bloody faint. He brings back his breathing mantra and just holds on.

The moment passes, but Fili still holds onto the railings in his usual white-knuckle grip, and he can't seem to let go. There's a voice in his head screaming at him to turn around and run back to his car and just _get away _because this isn't a good idea, but then the rational part of him is telling him to get this over with.

Fili looks over to the doors again and starts to think. If he walks in now, Thorin will _know_ something's wrong before he even says a word, because Fili never goes to him if he can help it. Ever. And then if Thorin asks, Fili knows he will tell him _everything_. Not just about what Dr Mithrandir said, but about his journal that he's ruined, about his panic attacks and how bad they really are, about how much he fucking _hates_ Thorin's guts sometimes and how scared he is about everything that's happening to him and he won't even be able to _stop_. He'll end up a sobbing mess in about two minutes, with Thorin staring at him in what Fili assumes will be a mixture of sheer disappointment and something resembling pity, before he tells him to go home and that he'll '_deal with him later'_.

And then he'll go home and ruin his journal some more and probably sleep for a bit and avoid Thorin for the rest of the night, and Thorin won't even bother.

Fili doesn't really blame him. He wouldn't bother with himself either.

And that's why he finds himself running back to his car, the pain in his chest verging on unbearable, but he doesn't want to stop. He almost feels like he could run to the edge of the world. So he carries on, past the car park, past the hills and down into the valley.

His lungs are on fire by the time he reaches the driveway to the house, and his legs can barely support him, and he's holding onto the gate as he coughs violently and then he's crying again, sucking in ragged, painful breaths as he clings onto the iron bars. He's scared of what tomorrow will bring, of what Mithrandir will tell him after the scan, of _everything_.

He's so fucking scared.

**oOo**

_June 10__th__ 2012_

_ please help_

_ fili_

Fili can hear someone shouting, but it seems far off, as if they're a mile down the road. On the edge of his blurred vision he can see a figure moving above him, and he thinks he can feel hands on his shoulders, digging into his skin. It _hurts_. He wants to move, to get away. It's disorientating and he can't place it and he's so confused.

"Fili-" he hears his name being called, but it sounds so distorted, like someone's shouting through cotton wool that's been stuffed mercilessly into his ears. He feels so lightheaded and sleepy and _Mahal_, what the fuck is happening to him-

"Fili-" Fili hears his name again, louder this time. He blinks, trying to clear his vision, but it does nothing. The figure just blurs in and out of focus and it's making him feel sick. He moans, unable to form the words that he wants to say. His pleas come out as garbled murmurs, and he just wants them to understand what he's saying but they won't-

"Fili!" the scream rings loud and clear in his ears this time, and when he opens his eyes, everything seems sharp and clear again, and the figure turns out to be Kili, and Kili is red-eyed and on the phone, frantically talking, words spilling out that Fili can't quite put together coherently.

"Kili?" Fili breathes, his chest burning. He groans in pain as he tries to move his head, which pounds mercilessly at the slightest tilt, and he realises he can taste the coppery tang of blood in the back of his mouth, and when he looks up again he realises he's lying on the floor of the foyer, marble columns stretching up above him.

"Kili." Fili moans, trying to get his brother's attention, but Kili is still babbling to whoever's on the other end of the phone. Fili vaguely catches an address, before his vision starts to blur again. Suddenly, Kili's cool hands are either side of his face which feels so hot and he doesn't know why. He opens his eyes and sees the familiar deep brown of Kili's, and manages a lop-sided smile.

"What are you doing?" Fili mumbles slowly, slurring.

"Fi, don't move. You've lost a lot of blood, the ambulance is on its way-"

"No- no!" Fili's heart turns to ice at the mention of an ambulance, and panic starts to work its way through his body once again. He's shaking as he reaches up to Kili, begging silently as words fail him. But Kili just shakes his head.

"It's okay, you're gonna be okay-" Kili cuts himself off with a sob, and he feels sick at the sight of the blood – _Fili's_ blood - staining Thorin's white marble floor, but he braces himself and smooths a hand over Fili's hair and tries to calm him down, whiling away the time until the ambulance or Thorin gets here, because he doesn't have a fucking clue what to do.

He's never been so scared in his life.

It's Thorin who gets there first, and he barrels through the door, moving faster than Kili's ever seen him do in his life. His face is almost as white as the walls, and his mutter of 'oh, Mahal-' only provokes another choked sob from Kili who watches as Thorin sinks to his knees on the opposite side of Fili, and looks to him. Kili doesn't know what to say. He can't think straight. All he can see is his brother bleeding to death on the stark white and it looks fucking _horrible_ and he's sure he's just been caught in a bad nightmare for the past three years but whenever he tries to wake up he can't so it must be real-

"Kili, listen to me!" he hears Thorin shout, and Kili snaps to attention as his thoughts go flying.

"You called the ambulance?"

Kili nods frantically, trying to ignore the sticky warmth of the blood seeping through his fingers.

"How long ago did you get here?"

Kili shakes his head, mouth opening and closing uselessly as he attempts to spit out some words. A time, at least. But nothing gets through.

"He's so _cold_-" Thorin breathes as he presses a hand gently to Fili's cheek, which seems to be rapidly losing colour and Kili feels so helpless and his brother is going to _die_-

"They're here." Thorin says suddenly, and the piercing wail of sirens pulls Kili from his despair and forces him to his feet. He wrenches the door open and the paramedics hurry in soon after, and then Kili is lost in the chaos that follows.

Minutes grow into hours as Kili sits on an uncomfortable, sub-standard hospital chair, fingers clenching and unclenching around the legs sporadically, as though he is trying to hold himself in place. He can hear Thorin beside him, on the phone. He doesn't know who to. He doesn't really care.

He doesn't care about much past what's behind those doors at the end of the corridor, which is currently devoid of anybody bar him and his uncle and the occasional porter.

The last Kili saw of his brother was him being taken into a room where Kili could not follow, bloodied and on the verge of consciousness. He kept asking for him, but Kili couldn't answer, and that had made him feel sick to his gut. He still feels sick now, Kili realises. It's just nerves, he knows, but it doesn't make it any better.

Thorin eventually stops talking, and Kili hears the rustle of his suit jacket as he puts his phone back in his pocket. Kili thinks about telling him that he's not allowed his phone here, but decides against it and continues staring blankly down the corridor, clinging onto the fading hope that his brother will be okay.

"That was Balin." Thorin speaks then, voice a sudden gunshot in an empty room, and Kili flinches at the sudden noise. Thorin doesn't miss it, and regards Kili with a look.

"You're tired." Thorin notices the dull glint to Kili's eyes then, and faces him properly, brow furrowing in concern. "Ki?"

Kili looks up at his name, because it's only ever Fili who calls him that. Thorin resigned that name to distant memory long ago. But hearing his uncle say it forces a wave of nostalgia upon him and he's choking back a sob, tears stinging in his eyes. He leans forward and digs the heel of his hands into his eyes as his elbows come to rest on his knees, and he knows he's shaking and he knows Thorin can see and he doesn't care and all he wants is Fili to be okay-

"Oh, lad-" Kili hears Thorin murmur and then he can feel his arms around him and he leans instinctively towards Thorin, gravitating to that warmth and security that had kept him and Fili safe for all those years, no matter how many bad patches they went through. And Mahal knows, there've been plenty of those.

"Don't-" Kili says suddenly, voice thick with all the bound up grief he didn't even know was there, "Don't say it's going to be okay now."

Thorin says nothing, but Kili can feel his grip tightens around him, like he's afraid of letting go all of a sudden.

"Because you've been saying that for three years-" Kili goes on, a pathetic sob punctuating his words every so often, "-and it's _still not okay_."

Thorin's fingers are digging into Kili's arms.

"I've been waiting for my brother to come back since Mahal knows when," Kili continues relentlessly, "but now I'm wondering if he even exists anymore- and if he does, he won't… he won't be the _same_. Will he?"

Thorin sucks in a ragged breath, and he can feel the burning in his eyes and Mahal, no, he's not going to fucking cry-

"No."


	8. Chapter 8

When Fili opens his eyes, all he can see is white. White walls, white floor, white ceiling, white blankets, white bandages- white everything, and it's piercingly bright and painful and he immediately clamps his eyes shut again. He doesn't know where he is.

Fili tries to move, but everything feels so heavy and stiff, like an old machine that's been left to rust for too long. He can't work properly. Groaning, he relents and stops trying. He then realises his head is absolutely pounding, and so is his left arm and he's not quite sure why. It also feels like they're bound tightly, in some coarse material, and Fili thinks it must be a bandage of some sort.

"Fi?" Fili hears someone murmur from his right side, and they sound oddly close to his ear. He opens his eyes slowly, in an attempt to reduce the sudden flare of white in his vision. At first, the figure seems to blur, but slowly comes into focus, and he sees the teal blue hoodie peeking out under a dark brown leather jacket that he's absolutely positive is his, and when he looks up he sees warm copper shrouded by dark rings on pale skin and he frowns. Those eyes belong to Kili, but those shadows don't.

"Kili?" Fili breathes, torn between relief and concern for his brother.

"Fi- _Mahal_, Fili, oh man-" Kili suddenly slumps forward, head resting on the hospital bed beside Fili's shoulder. Fili can hear him crying.

"Kili, hey-" Fili goes to sit up, but a hand on his left shoulder stops him and he turns sharply at the unexpected contact. Looking up, he sees the unmistakeable looming figure of Thorin, black and grey against the stark white. Except his eyes are a sharp blue in the monochrome, and glistening. Fili is sure he's seeing things. His uncle doesn't cry.

Ever.

"You gave us quite a scare, lad." Thorin says quietly, hand moving up to smooth a few stray strands of dirty blond hair out of Fili's face. His fingers lightly brushed the bandage on his head, and he sighed.

"We're not sure what happened. It looks like you fell when you got into the house, and you managed to crack your head open." Thorin explains, and Fili nods once in acknowledgement, blinking as he tries desperately to remember what he was doing. He remembers fleeting moments with the wind rushing past his ears, making him deaf to the world, legs pounding on the tarmac as he runs in no particular direction for no particular reason.

"I was running-" Fili closes his eyes, brow furrowing in concentration. "Running…"

"From _Brecon_?" Kili lifts his head, voice muffled from crying, as it was prone to do.

"From Brecon." Fili nods again, ignoring the flare of pain in the back of his head at the motion. "I had to distract myself, everything was driving me up the wall. I had an attack, right after I left Bombur's-"

"You were at Bombur's?" Thorin cuts in, confusion evident in his tone.

Fili waves him off, thinking it was irrelevant, "I'd just… I'd just come from the doctors."

Kili rakes a hand through his hair, struggling to piece everything together. He and Thorin both fix Fili with equally bemused looks at the mention of the doctors, and Fili groans internally, unable to form properly coherent thoughts into words with the grogginess still lingering.

"I was gonna… gonna tell you. Both of you-" Fili glances up to Thorin again, but he doesn't finish his sentence as a knock on the door interrupts them, and a doctor walks in. Mithrandir, Fili recognises him with no particular enthusiasm. He wishes he could just finish his story, while Thorin was actually bloody listening to him for once-

"I am sorry to intervene, but I would have a few words with Fili alone, if I may?" Dr Mithrandir, soft spoken and meek, steps into the room. Thorin is hard pressed to say no, so he nods and motions to Kili.

"We'll be right outside." Kili, obviously noting his brother's sudden anxiety, murmurs into Fili's ear as he rises, then follows Thorin obediently. When the door swings shut, Mithrandir drops the guise of timid doctor and strides over with purpose, grey eyes fixed on Fili, mouth an unwavering line. Fili is confused beyond measure, and it must be evident as Mithrandir answers the unspoken questions without missing a beat.

"They ran the CT scan on you while you were out, to save time." Mithrandir begins airily, as if they were talking about the weather. Fili can't help but feel annoyed. Not only did he interrupt him telling his family, he's acting like it's absolutely nothing important. Forcing his anger aside for the moment, he tries to listen to the doctor, but the grogginess is still there and his hearing seems just a bit muffled.

"You've been out for a long while, Fili. Near enough twelve hours. We managed to get the results done in that time." Fili notices Mithrandir is holding a blank paper file, and the sight fills him with dread. If it was nothing, he wouldn't have brought a bloody file along with him, would he?

"So, what's the verdict?" Fili sighs, almost sarcastically. He's so sick of everything in his life hanging loosely in the balance, just waiting to fall. He thinks it's about time he started getting some answers.

"Remember what I told you earlier?" Mithrandir starts go on again, but Fili's having none of it.

"Just _tell_ me!" his voice is a hoarse cry, knife-edged and desperate again.

When Mithrandir finally turns to him, his eyes are dim and his lips quirk downwards in a barely-disguised frown, and he sighs, as though bracing himself.

"We found a growth in your lung." He starts, slow and clear and impossibly loud in the silence of the bleak room. He continues. "It's slow-growing, at least, so there is a chance we could do something to relieve it, but there is no possible scenario where it is possible to fully remove it without endangering your life, Fili."

"Is that it? Just a growth?" Fili sounds relieved, and he knows he shouldn't get his hopes up but he can't help it, "That's easy enough, isn't it?" he almost smiles, lips quirking up at the corners.

Mithrandir sets the file down on the tray at the foot of his bed, before shaking his head. No.

"What?" Fili's smile falters, and the cold fear returns. "It's- it's not bad, though, right? Really bad?"

"Fili, we did a bronchoscopy on your lung-"

"A what?" Fili feels ridiculous for remembering that time he heard that term in some old episode of Casualty one night, and he doesn't remember a particularly happy ending for that poor bastard- _stop_.

He knows this is going to be bad. There's nothing positive that could come out of having some alien growth on your _lung_, for Mahal's sake. He resigns himself to the notion and lets Mithrandir continue, already thinking about what the fuck he's going to tell his brother, and Thorin. Mahal help him.

"A bronchoscopy. The term will mean little to you, I assume, but the results came back this afternoon, and…" Mithrandir pauses, as if thinking of what to say.

"Just say it."

"It's a carcinoid tumour. Cancerous."

Cancer. That's all Fili hears, before the blood starts rushing past his ears and his vision starts to blur again. He clamps his eyes shut tight, and he can feel his heart hammering violently against his ribcage in protest of the fear running icy channels through his bones. He feels sick to the stomach, and his mind is a haze of thoughts ricocheting around in absolute chaos, and he can feel how cold the room is and how the air seems to cling to his skin and it's suffocating and-

"Fili, look at me." Mithrandir calls him to his senses, firm hands resting on both of Fili's shoulders. Fili's eyes flash open, blinding blue against the pale room, and Mithrandir keeps his focus with nonsensical small talk, until Fili calms down and breathes properly again. It's all he can do to stop himself crying like a fucking idiot, because that's all he wants to do. Nonetheless, he forces himself to stop and listen to the old doctor.

"How-" Fili swallows, throat dry as a bone, "How long?" he asks quietly, and Mithrandir sighs heavily, as if he was expecting this question.

"It's… it's fairly into the later stages. Honestly, I couldn't tell you for definite… we'd need to do more tests for that. Statistically speaking, 80 percent of sufferers live past the five year mark." Mithrandir offers, standing upright again.

Fili just stares blankly at him. Five years? _Five fucking years _– what the hell is he going to do for five years? Sit there and wait for the cancer to kill him?

Mithrandir picks up the folder and turns back to Fili.

"I'll bring your family back in. Would you like to tell them, or shall I?" Mithrandir asks before Fili can ask anything else, but at the incredulous look on Fili's face, he speaks again: "You _cannot_ leave them in the dark and struggle through this alone, Fili. It would be most unwise."

Fili doesn't respond to Mithrandir's question, and continues to stare dead ahead, until Mithrandir sighs and leaves the room, doors swinging shut with a ringing finality. Fili knows he won't tell them himself. He won't be able to. He'll build himself up and then as soon as he sees Kili's bright eyes or sees Thorin smile just that little bit, he just won't be able to.

And he sincerely hopes that the reason he can hear Kili ranting and raving furiously outside not five minutes later is because Mithrandir's told them.

The doors crash open and Kili is the first one in, Thorin hot on his heels as he tries to tell Kili to calm the fuck down because he's doing more harm than good right now. Fili doesn't even care; he's more interested in trying to sit up properly, which he manages to do after a few moments.

"Fi? Talk to me!" he hears Kili whimper from beside him, and slowly, he turns his head to face his brother.

"Alright, little brother?" Fili hears himself say, and his lips stretch into a proper smile that reaches his eyes for the first time in a long while. Fili isn't even sure why he smiles. Hell, it's the last thing he should be doing right now.

What kind of sadistic idiot _smiles_ when they've just been told they're going to die?

Kili looks almost affronted, then his brow creases and his eyes grow dark and angry and he all but snarls in Fili's face.

"What the _fuck_?" he spits, "'_Alright'_? Am I 'alright'?"

"Kili, back off. _Now_." Thorin steps in, and he pushes Kili back into his seat, despite Kili's attempts to push him away. The room is deadly silent then, save for the ragged breathing from Fili, and Kili's occasional angry muttering. Thorin sighs, and leans back against Fili's bed, head in his hands.

Fili then notices Thorin's taken his jacket off, and his sleeves are rolled up, and his hair isn't immaculately gelled anymore. He looks oddly small in the harsh light of the room when he looks back up and over to Fili, face drawn and sharp eyes still glistening. He looks like he's waiting for Fili to say something.

"I don't know what you want me to say." Fili admits quietly. Thorin nods in acknowledgement and says nothing else.

"Are we just gonna sit here and pretend like nothing's happened? Are we gonna _pretend_, like Fili's been doing for Mahal knows how long?" Kili hisses angrily after a moment, slumped in his seat, glaring up at Thorin.

"Kili, stop-" Thorin looks up, face dark and angry, eyes glinting harshly as he regards his youngest with a look of disdain.

"No, he's right." Fili interrupts Thorin, and Kili looks up suddenly, surprised. "Look, these are facts. I have cancer, and there's nothing they can do about it. I have everything else wrong with me too, a whole list of things. Believe me, I _know_, I've written them out enough times. There's no use in pretending I'm alright anymore, because everyone fucking _knows_ I'm not okay."

"Fili, that's not true-"

"No, Thorin, it _is_ true. But thing is, I don't _care_ if people know." Fili presses on, fixing Thorin with a stony glare, "It makes absolutely no difference to me. I am who I am and I'm stuck with _me_, whether I like it or not."

The room falls silent. But to Fili, it's suffocating and unbearable and he wishes someone would speak. Or do _something_. But Thorin is sitting there in stunned silence, frozen in deep thought. He's looking at Fili, but Fili feels like he's looking right through him, and it sets him on edge.

Eventually, it's Kili who makes the first move.

"Fi…" Kili sounds so hurt at that statement, Fili almost regrets saying it, but something has sparked a new fire in him and he's suddenly filled with the need to become _better_. Better at everything; better at being a brother and a nephew and a friend. For himself, in part, because he's so sick of being so useless.

But mostly for them. For Kili and Thorin.

"We'll get through it. We always do." Fili declares eventually, a smile playing at his lips again. He meets Thorin's gaze again, and he can see the doubt there now. It's always there.

"And I know you doubt me, Thorin, I _know_-" Fili emphasises harshly when Thorin looks like he's about to interrupt, but Thorin keeps silent so Fili continues, "-but you doubted me six years ago. I'm still here, aren't I?" Fili says to him, voice faltering on the last few words. Thorin visibly crumbles, and Fili is suddenly swept into a bone-crushing hug. It's all he can do to hold onto Thorin.

"I'm sorry, Fi-" he hears Thorin say, and he swears down that Thorin is trying not to fucking cry and that's a sight if he ever saw one. Fili just smiles and hugs Thorin tighter, not daring to say anything because he knows his voice has gone to pieces already.

After a moment or two, he hears Thorin trying to speak, but every time, he stumbles over his words and cuts himself off. Fili can hear the odd strain in his voice of someone who's trying not to break, and he can't ignore that equally odd, painful tug in his chest at the sound. His only response is to cling to Thorin's shirt even tighter, like a little kid. He almost feels silly, but knowing that Thorin was there, _finally_, was a comforting thought and he was loathe to let it go.

"I'm sorry I- I doubted you." Thorin sits back, breaking the hug and sitting back in favour of meeting Fili's gaze, but he still keeps his hands firmly clasped on Fili's arms, "I really am."

Fili manages to smile (for Thorin, _that_ he hadn't done in a while) and when Thorin finally lets go, he breathes out raggedly and nods. Thorin doesn't give him a reason for his doubt, and Fili doesn't expect him to. Not now, at least. Let them build their bridges first, Fili thinks.

"We'll get through this one." Thorin says, and manages a smile too, but then Fili's engulfed by Kili within ten seconds and he can't help the watery laugh that escapes him.

"You're such a _shit_, you know that?" Kili mumbles into his shoulder and Fili nods.

His face hurts like hell, but he doesn't mind. He hasn't smiled that long for a while either.


	9. Chapter 9

Fili's free to go after a tedious week where he just stares at the wall or argues about what shade of blue the curtains are with Kili and occasionally Thorin. Thorin ends up popping into Durin & Sons a few times, just to keep things ticking over and to keep Dwalin updated, because Balin is hopeless with a phone. Kili refuses to leave his brother's side, and Fili doesn't want to tell him to go because he'd be lying if he said he didn't want the company. It's the only thing stopping him from going insane.

So when he finally steps outside, clothed in normal jeans and a t-shirt, he feels much better than he has in a long, long while. Fili breathes in the fresh air gladly; the light summer breeze feels so much nicer on his skin than the sporadic air conditioning on offer in his room.

Thorin slings an arm round his shoulder as he walks by, but not without a skeptical look at Fili's newly dreaded hair. Somehow, he'd managed to convince the nurses to let him start dreading, provided he kept it out of the way of his head wound, which was just below his hairline by his right temple, so that was easily taken care of. It didn't help that Kili was only too willing to go and get his brother the things he needed.

Thorin suspects they only did it to wind him up, and he can't help a tiny smile at the Fili he once knew is coming back, and that's all that matters to him right now.

"Home?" he looks to Fili, who grins and falls into step with his uncle as they make their way to Thorin's car. Kili isn't there today, seeing as Thorin ended up threatening to take his phone and laptop away from him if he didn't go home and shower because Mahal, he was beginning to stink the place out.

Once they leave the carpark, Thorin makes to go home, but Fili suddenly makes a noise of protest.

"Before we go home, can we drop by Bombur's?"

Thorin regards him suspiciously. The last time he did that, Fili ended up as sick as a dog for about a week. But then again, Thorin thinks, that was a while ago. So he turns the wheel and heads into Brecon.

It's five minutes before they reach the bakery, and Fili hops out and eagerly makes his way to Bombur's, stepping through the doorway and waiting for the familiar jingle of the bell. Thorin follows; the niggling feeling that if he leaves Fili alone something bad will happen is too great to ignore.

Bombur calls his usual greeting before he emerges from the back rooms, only this time he has Bifur and Bofur in tow. When they notice Fili, he gets a sudden chorus of welcome and three bright grins that could quite easily light up the shop.

"I believe you gave us all quite a scare, lad." Bombur chuckles fondly, glancing at Thorin, and he doesn't fail to notice that the esteemed heir looks a damn sight more human and less like a machine. But he's not going to mention that. The baker turns his attention back to Fili.

"Do I need to ask?" Fili smirks, a sharp glint to his eye that screams mischief, and Bombur shakes his head. Fili can have all the damn bear claws he wants, just so long as he _stays_ Fili this time.

While Bombur retreats to acquire Fili some bear claws, Bofur notices Fili's new hairdo with great enthusiasm, to Thorin's chagrin.

"Didn't realise it was _that_ long," Bofur points out, and Fili nods, pulling his newly-locked dreads back gently to tie it up in a loose pony, "Please don't tell me you're going to start farming hemp or something." Bofur adds shortly, lips quirking in amusement.

"Damn." Fili replies without missing a beat, "There go my aspirations of being a world class hemp farmer. Although, hemp is a pretty versatile product-"

"_No_." Thorin grumbles, having had absolutely no say in Fili's new choice of hairstyle. Nevertheless, Fili's short bark of laughter is enough to pull him out of his momentary grump, and he even manages to crack a tiny smile. Although it turns into more of a grimace when he starts to think of the possibility of things _living_ in Fili's hair. Mahal help him.

"Here y'are, lad." Bombur returns, handing a wrapped pastry to Fili who takes it gratefully, and wastes no time getting stuck in. Thorin just sighs exasperatedly and nods his thanks to Bombur, who returns the gesture with a minute smile.

Thorin thinks he hasn't seen any of them this happy in a long time.

**oOo**

The following weeks passed by in relative ease, with Fili back home and Kili back in college, life resumed its regular clockwork motion in the Durin household for the first time in an age. It seemed to Thorin that everything that had happened in these last few months quickly grew into little more than hazy memory, only ever stirred on the rare occasion that Fili would slip up and lash out, or add another page to his journal, or retreat to his room for longer than a day. But he always pulled himself together. Always.

And Thorin is proud of him for that, proud of him more than words can convene. So he simply says nothing and remains by Fili's side as and when he needs him, because that's the least he can do after being so bloody _stupid_ for the past few years. It took all this time, Thorin thinks, for him to realise just how much damage he was doing by _not_ doing anything, and he can't forgive himself for that, even if Fili is starting to.

Aside from that, things are looking up, Thorin remembers with a faint glimmer of a smile.

"Thorin! We're ready!" he hears Fili call from the foyer, sounding a damn sight happier than he had in a while. Thorin relishes the thought, picks up his packed duffel bag and makes his way out to where his nephews are currently buzzing about, pestering him to hurry up because they want to go boating before the day is out. Thorin shakes his head at their childish impatience and helps Fili load up the car with their things while Kili babbles incessantly to the side, passing bags every so often.

Once they're loaded up and ready to go, it's not more than 40 minutes to Balin's lakehouse, and Thorin sets his mind on that and wills himself to forget about work for a bit. Is it quite so selfish to want a bit of a break? He wonders, but when he spares a glance in the rear view mirror at Fili and Kili already bickering over somebody's song choice and scrabbling to reach the radio dial, he manages a smile and thinks that yes, it's definitely worth being a bit selfish. If not for himself, then for them.

"Is everyone coming?" Thorin hears Fili ask after a while, and when he glances into the mirror again he sees that Kili has burrowed into his hoodie with his earphones firmly in. Seems like Fili prevailed in that particular argument. Thorin considers Fili's question for a moment, mentally checking through who was and who wasn't coming out for this little impromptu holiday.

It hadn't been Thorin's idea, exactly. Dwalin had mentioned that they all needed a break from everything, and Thorin was hard pressed not to agree.

Kili had all but finished his college course, and he was bored out of his mind just rattling around the house looking for things to do when Fili wasn't there, which was often. The elder was nearly always in Brecon, looking for work, college courses - anything. But it wasn't the most fun process to go through on a daily basis, Thorin can imagine, which he thinks is probably why Fili ends up coming home every afternoon and taking over the entire living room to play Skyrim. And he means the _entire_ room. And having a perpetually annoyed twenty-year old and an overly bored seventeen-year old within the same four walls for long periods of time was, as Thorin found out, not a pleasant experience.

So, Mahal, _yes_, they needed a break.

"Well, Balin and Dwalin, obviously." Thorin begins, "and I'm fairly sure the Risons are going to be there. Be good for you lads to catch up with Ori." he hears Fili murmur an agreement from the back seat, and carries on.

"Bofur, Bifur and Bombur are there for your birthday and the day after, as are Oin and Gloin, but I think Gloin has his lad with him, Gimli."

"Aw, Gimli. Haven't seen him for a bit." Fili thinks aloud, remembering vaguely the young boy with hair like fire, and he had a plenty fiery personality to boot. He even went as far as nicking Kili's beloved strawberry laces one year, and that had been an adventure and a half.

Fili hears Thorin chuckle quietly, and smiles to himself. He's just glad to see Thorin being a _human_, human being. Mahal knows it's been a while since he saw a smile grace his shadowed face.

Satisfied with Thorin's answer, Fili sits back into his seat and relishes in the sound of Pink Floyd filling the car for a while, until they reach the turning that will lead them to Balin's lakehouse. Fili can see it in the distance, looming in the grey mist of the Brecons. It's a long time since he's been here, but there's still a kind of lingering familiarity about the place.

When they reach the end of the gravel driveway, they find Balin is already opening the door to greet them. Kili is the first one out of the car, and he's bounding over to the doors before Fili can drag him over to help him unload the bags. Thorin smirks at Fili's disgruntled face, and makes to help him instead. They make quick work of the bags, and Thorin slams the boot shut before he walks over to join his family. Fili is being quizzed incessantly by Dwalin and Thorin almost wants to step in, but he decides Fili can handle it.

"He looks happy." Balin smiles when Thorin ends up standing beside him instead, leaving Dwalin to the boys. Thorin nods and ducks his head, not wanting to meet his friend's stare quite yet.

"He _is_ happy. I think." Thorin replies quietly, hefting a bag over his shoulder. He spares a glance to his nephews who are pestering Dwalin about his new tattoo that makes up part of a sleeve, Thorin notices, but he only shakes his head and decides that Dwalin deserved the sudden turn of the tide against him after his impromptu inquisition session.

You get what you give with those lads, Thorin thinks bitterly, and he turns to follow Balin inside.


	10. Chapter 10

Fili feels the cool air breeze over his naked back in the dim light of his room, and he cracks an eye open, the sudden cold waking him up. The curtains are blowing softly in the low wind; the light fluttering barely reaches Fili's ears. There's a clear sky outside from what he can see, but it's not yet sunrise, Fili thinks, as there's still the silvery-grey shadow lingering on the horizon where the night is disappearing. The fresh smell of dew wakes him up a little more, and he pushes himself up to rest on his elbows, vision blurred by the vestiges of sleep. He just lies there, not thinking about anything in particular, and relishes the silence for a few moments longer. Mahal knows that's about all the peace and quiet he's going to get today. The clock on the little table beside his bed reads 05:24AM, then below it: 22/7/12.

The twenty-second of July.

"Happy birthday, me." Fili groans, falling back into his pillow. He's never liked birthdays. No matter how much you try, the spotlight is on you and there's absolutely fuck all you can do about it. There's a niggling feeling in the back of Fili's mind, though, that this particular birthday is going to be quite a different story.

Sighing, he stretches his arms above his head and draws random shapes in the air to entertain himself for a minute or two, until his shoulders start to ache. He draws them back and yawns, debating on what to do.

He's deep in thought for a good few minutes, then a gentle knock at the door distracts him. If he hadn't been fully awake, he's sure he wouldn't have heard it at all. Whoever is on the other side of the door doesn't wait for an answer, however, and the door opens quietly to reveal a mop of messy brown hair falling haphazardly over two dark eyes, gleaming brightly in the gloom, and a wolfish grin plastered across his face.

Fili laughs breathlessly. Who else was he expecting at half-past five in the bloody morning?

"Kili!" Fili whisper-shouts as he grins and sits up, and Kili bounds over and onto the bed like an over-sized puppy. He's clutching two hastily wrapped presents and Fili is sure the grin on his little brother's face is lighting up the room.

"Happy birthday, brother." Kili pushes the presents into Fili's arms, and the blond sighs fondly, a smile working its way onto his face.

"Thank you, Kee." Fili chuckles, and begins to open the first one. It feels soft and plushy, and he's hard-pressed to work out what it is until he actually opens it. It's a plush lion toy, and Fili stares at it for a moment, face scrunched in confusion. He opens his mouth to say something, but Kili suddenly bursts out into a fit of laughter, only smothered by Fili's pillow.

"Your _face_!" Fili hears Kili snort, and he can't help himself and starts to laugh too. Eventually, Kili sits up and regains enough composure to get some coherent words out.

"It's a joke, man. Everyone calls you a lion-" Kili begins, until Fili looks at him in sheer horror. People didn't call him a lion, did they? Oh, Mahal. "-In a good way! Like, lions are strong and brave and shit. It's not a serious thing, it's a joke, like I said!"

"Who even calls me that?" Fili's lips stretch into an amused smirk and he stares down at the lion in his hands, staring back up at him with beady black eyes.

"I've heard Thorin say it! No word of a lie, and some others too. Mostly the family." Kili smiles. "I don't know, I thought it suited you." he shrugs, ducking his head. Fili laughs, the notion finally sticking in his groggy mind.

"Thank you, I appreciate it." he says, setting the lion carefully beside him. He reaches for the second present then, and peels away the paper. Inside, a black box lies, nondescript and plain. Fili glances at Kili, and sees that he's watching him carefully, an uncertainty to his eyes that Fili frowns slightly at, but he moves on and opens the box. There's a thin leather cord from which a sharp tooth hangs from, along with a burnished gold feather. It's a necklace, and Fili loves it, but just as he goes to say that, Kili butts in.

"That's a wolf's tooth. Look at it." Kili leans in and picks the necklace up so that the tooth hangs in clear view of Fili, who takes it in his hand and inspects it closely. There's a metal plate around the top of it, where the hook is to keep it attached to the leather cord, but there's something engraved in the metal, and Fili peers in for a closer look.

It seems to be a simple geometric pattern of sharp, bold lines that cross and weave under and over a main strand that runs through the centre. It looks almost Celtic in design, Fili thinks. When he turns the tooth around, the pattern changes and grows thinner, with more lines appearing, and the strict lines grow wilder and less geometric in design, curving elegantly around the band until they reach the beginning of the first pattern again. It's a full circle, and Fili can see no end or beginning; the pattern flows too well.

"Remember Thorin saying about our sigils?" Kili asks, and Fili nods, vaguely remembering Thorin's interest in their ancestors. Fili never cared for it. Kili grins and continues.

"Well those are ours. Yours is that one-" Kili points out the bolder lines, then he points to the wilder, thinner lines, "And that one's mine."

"Y-you actually researched this?" Fili asks in quiet amazement, still gazing at the intricate engravings, soaking up every detail.

"Yeah! Thorin didn't tell me much, but it was enough to go on. He showed me your sigil and what it meant, and he showed me mine too, but they were like…. intertwined together, one pattern on its own just looks odd. It's weird. It's like… you can't split them. Kind of like us, huh?"Kili flops back on the pillow, playing absently with the lion toy.

"Kili…" Fili feels a warmth blossom in his chest and he can't stop himself from engulfing Kili in a huge bear-hug, laughing as the younger yelps and tries to scramble away with no success. Kili relents eventually and grins to himself. He was just glad to have his brother back.

"I guess you like it, huh?" Kili asks when Fili finally lets go.

"I love it." Fili says quietly as he puts the necklace on, watching the tooth fall against his chest. He's about to say something then, but suddenly Kili has him in yet another bone-crushing hug and Fili can only laugh breathlessly, surprised.

"Kee, what are you doin'- man-" Fili snorts, limbs struggling uselessly in Kili's hold. He forgets how strong his little brother is sometimes. But the momentum sends them both toppling over the edge of the bed and onto the floor with a crashing thud that Fili really fucking hopes doesn't wake everybody else up-

"Ow!" Kili hits the ground first and Fili's sudden short bark of laughter is way too loud for this time of morning, Fili immediately clamps a hand over his mouth and Kili can't help but dissolve into helpless giggles, burying his face into a pillow that had fallen off along with them. They lay like that for a moment, and when no other sound comes Kili rolls Fili onto his back and grins down at him.

"We're good, right?" he asks after a moment, smile faltering.

"We're good." Fili reassures, smiling up at Kili who nods, but still doesn't move to let Fili up.

"And we'll always be good, right?" Kili presses, the crease between his brows deepening as concern washes over his features.

"Weeeelll-" Fili's sarcasm is quickly interrupted by Kili punching his shoulder, and Fili laughs gently at his brother's impatience.

"Why wouldn't we be? What's brought all this on, hey?" Fili asks, grin fading as he furrows his brow in concern, propping himself up on his elbows. Kili sits back then, giving his brother room to move. In all honesty, he doesn't know why he's asking.

He just wants that little bit of reassurance, he supposes.

"Hey-" Fili catches Kili's gaze after he ducks his head, "-we're good. You're my little brother and I'm stuck with you to the ends of the earth and back, whether or no. That good enough for you?"

Something settles into place for Kili then. It's like when he's been missing the last piece of a puzzle and he suddenly finds it, hidden away under the box or a coaster or a newspaper, and while the puzzle looks almost complete to anyone else, _he_ knows there's something missing and until he puts it together it's not quite right. It's subtle but it makes the world of difference, and he can feel it.

Now, it seems he's found the missing piece.

Kili smiles in the gloom and looks up, bright copper meeting steel blue.

"Yeah. That's good enough for me."


	11. Chapter 11

All in all, the previous week had been nice and _peaceful_ and a world away from the nightmare that had made up the last few months.

So of course, when the rest of the family arrive, all hell breaks loose.

Within the first ten minutes of being there, Gimli is tearing off down the dock with Fili and Kili hot on his heels, and Thorin honestly doesn't know if they're trying to stop him or _join_ him. Gloin and Oin are torn between going after the boys or just hoping to Mahal that Fili has sense enough for the three of them. The Rison brothers are causing quite a stir with news of Ori's university success spreading like wildfire through the house, and even Thorin finds himself in conversation with the ever-finicky Dori who's singing his little brother's praises, and rightly so, Thorin decides. Nori is deep in conversation with a knackered-looking Bofur, who is nodding lamely in all the right places, looking like he just wants Nori to shut his gob and let him sleep. Bifur and Bombur are lugging some worn looking suitcases into the foyer, and Dwalin eventually gets up and goes to offer a hand after watching on in badly-disguised amusement.

This was certainly going to be a holiday to remember, Thorin sighs heavily as Dori continues to prattle on incessantly. Kind of like one of those really annoying Shih Tzu's that keep scratching at the door no matter how many times you tell him to shut up. Thorin regrets starting the bloody conversation in the first place.

How Balin could be so lax about having thirteen rowdy guests wandering freely around his plush lakehouse was a mystery to Thorin. Mahal knows, if this was his house, he'd have them all on constant surveillance with passcode-locked doors and motion sensors. Thorin considers them his friends, but that's not to say they aren't crafty bastards because they _bloody well are_.

Eventually, all the new arrivals are settled down and welcomed with a feast fit for a king and his court at least. Dwalin especially looks pleased at his mean feat of barbequeing, and Thorin can't help the amused snort. Dwalin just shoots him a half-arsed look of disdain.

"Somethin' funny, Oakenshield?" he quips, mouth a straight line except for the split-second quirk in which Thorin knows he's only joking, so he nods to Dwalin's charcoal stained apron and smirks.

"Never had you down as a pinny kind of lad."

"An entire smorgasbord of sausage related humour in front of you and you go for the apron? The world is full of wasted opportunities."

Laughter erupts down the table and fills the room with a warmth that feels foreign to Thorin. It's as if the sound has worked its way in soft tendrils through his skin and to his bones, sweeping up into his chest and struggling to drag out a long-forgotten feeling. He's lost in his thoughts for a moment, until a familiar voice carries to his ears and pulls him back.

"Do mine ears deceive me or did Uncle Thorin make a joke?" Kili calls loudly as he enters the room amongst the laughter that seems to grow at his words.

Thorin looks up, a smile playing at his lips, but not quite all there yet. He sees Kili walking through the doorway with a bounce to his step and a brightness to his eyes that Thorin hasn't seen in a while, but Thorin can't help but feel a bit out of sorts still. There's something not quite right with the picture in front of him.

But then Fili emerges after his brother, standing tall (Mahal, when was he ever _that_ tall? He almost fills the doorframe), calm grey eyes bright and clear as he glances across the room, hair burning gold in the soft light as he grins, and his smile seems to light up the room when a chorus of 'happy birthday!' reaches his ears.

The feeling clicks into place. Thorin's content and he feels _whole _again.

The years of him struggling to hold together two sides of a family that was falling apart at the seams had taken its toll, had torn him in two, and where his heart once had been he felt nothing but the endless dull thrum that told him he was alive, yes, blood was flowing through his veins, yes, but he was not _living_. He was fighting to regain his eldest nephew who had slipped so far from his reach it seemed almost impossible, and on the other hand he had his youngest to raise so that his parents would've been proud of him. Thorin knew Dis and Vali would have loved their sons to whatever end, whatever had happened, but it was for _himself_ that he really wanted to see Kili succeed, however selfish that might've been.

He gave Kili everything he could want for, and Fili got left behind. And Thorin will not forgive himself for that, not in this lifetime or the next.

But when all hope for Fili seemed forgotten in the embers of a destroyed childhood, it had been rekindled and a fire had sprung forth, bigger and brighter than ever before. It burned brighter than any hope Thorin could have given Fili. And Thorin was not going to kick it to dust this time.

And that was enough to fill the void, Thorin thinks. That was enough.

"I'm not all dark sarcasm." Thorin responds lightly to Kili's quip, and flashes a wolfish grin his youngest nephew's way. Kili blinks in surprise, not expecting Thorin to even bother responding. Fili sniggers and shoves his brother gently out of his way to claim his seat next to Thorin. Kili eventually pulls himself together and sits on Thorin's other side, Thorin's quip soon forgotten as he hungrily eyes the feast in front of him.

"Well, seeing as you've decided to grace us with your presence-" Thorin begins, glancing to each of his nephews in turn, "-I suppose we can start, eh, Balin?"

Balin chuckles and nods, gesturing to the food.

"Knock yerself out, lads." Balin says fondly, and the table descends into a familiar sort of organised chaos as everyone dives for their favourite foods.

The dinner passes by in a blur. Once the table has been all but licked clean, there's definitely some bad impromptu singing from what Fili can recall, then they're all in the lounge passing presents here there and everywhere until they find their way to Fili, whose quick wit and easy words keep the evening flowing much better than he was anticipating. He's been gifted a bunch of books from Ori, most of which he knows will end up forgotten on his decrepit bookshelf but he thanks him nonetheless. Dwalin gifts him a set of matching silver braid clasps which he can use on his dreads, and Fili is just relieved he's not going to spend eternity trying to hunt down lost hairbands. From the others, he receives money that he's already planning on spending after seeing Dwalin's new tattoo.

With each exchange of thanks and gifts, Fili feels Thorin seems to be lurking on the edges, not quite joining in. He shoots him several questioning looks, but each time he just gets an odd smirk in response. Fili eventually decides to leave it, although the sour taste of disappointment is sticking in his throat and he's hard pressed to forget about it.

When everyone's had their chats and curious glances have been spared at Fili's gifts from the evening, most of the family end up back in the kitchen, refilling drinks and snacking on what little leftovers there are, leaving Fili, Dwalin, Balin and Thorin in the lounge, with Fili absently toying with one of the clasps from Dwalin.

"Hey, Fili." Thorin finally decides to speak up, then.

Fili hears Thorin walk over to him, and he can see his smart, overly-polished leather shoes out of the corner of his eye. Fili doesn't look up. He continues playing with the clasp, twirling it in his fingers, over and over, running the tips of his fingers over the smooth engravings. He hears Thorin sigh loudly, and he suspects that he meant to, and then Thorin is sitting beside him on the floor, back against one of the sofas and legs flat out in front of him. Fili looks up then in mild surprise.

"You didn't think I'd forget your birthday present, huh?" Thorin smiles gently, and hands him a small black box. Fili takes it curiously, curling one hand around the hair clasp as he opens the box. Inside, a ring is set. It's a plain gold band, but when Fili looks closer, he sees a bright glint of colour set in the centre, running around the entire band. He takes it out gingerly, curiosity piqued.

The colours are not the same all the way around, Fili notices. They change, sometimes flaring in red but sometimes tranquil in blues and greens. Even more than that though, they seem to _glow_. Fili knows what it is. He's heard Thorin talk about it before.

"The Arkenstone." Fili breathes, looking at Thorin with wide eyes and a tiny smile, as though he can't quite believe it. Thorin nods, his own smile widening at Fili's incredulous expression.

"My father gave me my own when I was twenty-one-" Thorin lifts his right hand, and sure enough, a similar gold band adorns his index finger, with the same strip of the Arkenstone in the centre, "-so now, I give this to you."

Fili can't quite believe what he's hearing, but before he can even get his thoughts together properly, he finds himself asking:

"I thought this only went from father to son?"

Thorin sighs, and nods, glancing down at his own fidgeting hands.

"It is, and while I can't and will never try to replace your dad, Fee, _never_-" Thorin looks up again, catching Fili's gaze this time, and he holds it, "-you are the closest thing I will have to a son, you and Kili both." a tentative smile returns to his face, and Thorin lays an arm around Fili's shoulders, pulling his nephew to him. Fili lets him, Thorin's words sinking in as he gazes at the ring a little longer. He slips it onto his right index, like Thorin, and then he smiles. Properly.

"Thank you." he says simply, not daring to speak any more.

"Hey, did either of you want-" Kili comes bounding back into the room, and seeing his uncle and Fili on the floor, he stops in his tracks and frowns, thinking something's wrong. When they both look up to greet him with matching grins, however, Kili relaxes, and promptly deposits himself on Thorin's other side, the question on his mind completely forgotten as he and Fili are quickly swept up into a conversation of their own, and Thorin knows he has no part in it, so he simply stands up and makes to go into the kitchen to leave them to it.

Dwalin isn't letting him go so quickly though.

"Oakenshield, getting all _soppy_?" Dwalin quips, but on seeing his badly-disguised grin, Thorin just shakes his head and tries to hide a fond smirk, interest suddenly piqued by a rather plain looking vase sitting on the top of a nearby table. When he eventually looks back up after a few moments, Dwalin is oddly silent, and regarding him with a curious look.

"Not a bad thing, mate. It's been a good while since we saw you three this close." Dwalin's grin fades and his tone is sincere, it's not quite condescending either, but Thorin knows there's a threat hidden behind those words somewhere. And Thorin can't blame him. Mahal knows these moments are few and far between.

As far as Fili's concerned, the evening goes to shit soon after; everyone's either too pissed to talk or too tired to do anything other than lie there and make half-arsed one-liners to someone across the room.

Unfortunately for him, Fili falls into neither of those categories.

He's just feeling quite merry, if you want to put it that way. Kili's not faring much better either. At the very least, they still have their wits about them, Fili thinks, as he sees Nori struggling to make it up the stairs with Bofur being absolutely no help at all, giggling to himself at the bottom of the stairs.

Fili finds himself walking up the stairs himself after watching Nori just lie down and give up, and he passes by the crafty bugger with a thoroughly amused grin on his face. He makes his way to his room slowly, brain lost in thoughts that he can't quite put together for reasons he can't quite explain.

He reaches his room and closes the door behind him, shutting out the raucous noise from downstairs. He shuts his eyes and absently wonders how the hell poor Gimli is managing to sleep in this riot.

Taking in a deep breath, he opens his eyes and blinks as they adjust to the dim light of the room. It's not as big as his own room back at Thorin's place, but it's nice enough. And not fucking monochrome.

He walks across the room to the little writing desk that's been shoved against the window, and when you sit there you can see right across the lake. Fili loves it. It's nice and quiet and he can lose himself if he needs to, when his mind starts going haywire or when he starts feeling rough again. It doesn't happen so much anymore though, Fili thinks hopefully.

Looking down at the desk, he sees his journal there. Grey and bleak amongst the light wood; it just looks depressing, even to Fili. But he opens it nonetheless, to the next clean page (he hasn't written anything particularly bad for a while, it's now mostly doodles and sketches) and he starts to write.

Fili doesn't know how quickly time travels, or how slowly, or if it's been travelling by at all. He's lost in his words that flow from mind to paper like the river runs to the sea, and he's hard pressed to stop, even when someone is knocking on his door urgently, calling him repeatedly as if that would make him respond faster.

Eventually, Fili does put the pen down, and he closes the book, and opens the door. Kili is standing there in nothing but his swim shorts, and Fili just stares blankly at him, no smart remark coming to mind.

"Come on! We're gonna go for a swim, it's midnight man, it'll be cool!" Kili blurts out excitedly, words tumbling over each other in a blur that Fili only just manages to make sense of.

"Literally. You're gonna freeze if you go in there." Fili murmurs, the idea of jumping into a dark lake in the middle of the night when it's probably fucking freezing doesn't appeal to him in the least.

"Correction, _we're_ gonna freeze." Kili marches into his room and dives into Fili's barely unpacked suitcase.

"It'll be fine, Balin's taking us out on the boat, they'll have a heater going for when we get back out of the water, Dwalin's coming with us – it was his idea, actually-" Kili continues babbling as he rifles through the clothes until he finds Fili's own swim shorts and throws them blindly in Fili's direction, telling Fili to be at the dock in ten as he dashes out and back down the hallway again.

Fili decides that Kili is a complete idiot, but gets changed anyway. On the way out of his room, he grabs two hoodies, knowing that Kili probably left his behind.

It takes him little more than five minutes to walk to the dock, and he can feel the chill from the water as soon as he steps foot down on the wooden planks. There's alarm bells ringing faintly in the back of his mind, and he can feel his heart hammering against his ribcage, but he wills himself to carry on and just humour Kili for now, _just go along with him_, he tells himself.

He can see Kili at the end of the dock, jumping up and down on the spot, rubbing his hands over his arms in an attempt to ward off the cold. Fili stares at him smugly from his warm hoodie, and Kili narrows his eyes but says nothing.

"R-r-ready?" Kili shivers, and Fili shakes his head.

"Just get this over with, eh?"

Kili laughs and leads the way onto the boat, where Dwalin is stood next to Balin who's at the wheel, looking less than impressed.

Dwalin notices Fili's incredulous expression and laughs loudly, the sound breaking through the air harshly. Fili looks up, frowning.

"It won't kill ya, lad. They do this all the time in the Forces, gets 'em prepared. Can't go through a twenty-first without doing something a little silly, eh?" Dwalin grins and claps Fili on the shoulder as he steps onto the boat. Fili returns the smile, and Kili notices it doesn't quite reach his eyes.

"Where's Thorin?" Fili asks his brother as Balin manoeuvres the boat out of the dock and heads out into the lake.

"I dunno, think he buggered off to bed after Dwalin beat him at FIFA." Kili shrugs, still shivering. He looks like he's somewhere else though, Fili thinks, and he wonders if Kili finally has realised this is a bad idea.

He hasn't.

The boat stops and Kili is immediately up and wanting to get in the water, pacing lightly as Dwalin instructs them on what to do. Fili isn't even paying attention as he pulls his hoodie off reluctantly; the harsh mountain chill just seems to go straight to his bones and he shivers, the alarm bells sounding louder than before. It's only for a few seconds, Fili thinks, he'll just dive under, have a swim then come straight back up. It'll be all over before he realises it.

He hopes.

Before Fili knows it, he's standing on the edge of the boat, staring into the deep black depths of the lake with Kili beside him. Dwalin appears to be counting down, and Fili is about to turn and ask why, but just as he looks up Kili pulls him forward and he's falling and he can't _stop_.

The first thing he feels is ice surging through his skin and straight to his chest, he can hear the water rushing past his ears and his heart pounding frantically in his chest and it's absolutely deafening and he's numb from the cold and the fear is starting to take hold as icy tendrils wrap around his limbs and lock them into place. He can't _move_. He tries to open his mouth and _scream_, but when no sound comes out and his mouth is filled with the inky water he realises he's underwater and sinking- _sinking, _and he can't recall what the fuck Dwalin was saying and why the hell didn't he listen and-

Blind panic takes over. He's swallowing too much water and there's no air, and he can't even move his legs to kick himself back up to the surface, not that he can even see where he is, it's just cold and empty and black and _no-one_ can hear him screaming and all he can think of is that day, eleven years ago when he lost his childhood to the flames and he so badly wants to find Kili because Kili will make everything okay, he'll get him back up on the boat, or even Dwalin, but he can't see either of them-

There's just _nothing_.

In the midst of his panic, this nothingness seems oddly calming though, and he wants to let himself go with it. It feels like liberation. Like everything that had ever held him back was gone, like the chains binding him to his darkest thoughts had suddenly been broken, and the world was lifted off his shoulders. He can _breathe_ again, and Fili's thoughts are quelled; visions of raging fires and thick, acrid smoke are replaced by the gentle rolling of the water around him, the calm rushing as the current drifts past his ears.

He's falling and he knows it, he can feel it, but Fili decides that he doesn't really care. Not anymore. He's free. He's happy. Why should he care?

And it's in that void, that _nothingness_, that Fili lets himself go.


	12. Chapter 12

Kili doesn't even remember how long he stood on that boat for, shaking uncontrollably as the cold sunk deep into his skin. He stood there, waiting for his brother to resurface. What the hell was he doing? Kili had thought. Dwalin had told the both of them explicitly not to stay under any longer than two, maybe three minutes at most.

"He's probably just messing around with us, Kili, he's not that stupid." Dwalin had said in an attempt at reassurance, but the uncertain edge to his voice set alarm bells ringing in Kili's mind.

Kili started to feel guilty for making Fili do this, he could see he didn't want to, and then he was stupid enough to _pull_ him in when they dived. When five minutes had passed, he couldn't wait any longer and he dived straight back in, Dwalin's shouts lost in the surge of water behind him.

The icy water hit Kili like a brick to the face, and it might as well have been for how much his face stung after he broke the surface. He ignored it, and began swimming down into the dark, eyes stinging at the bitter cold of the water. He can't recall how long he swam for, but he remembers his lungs were starting to burn as air ran out, and his arms grew heavy and his legs barely seemed to propel him forward with each kick.

But Kili did not stop. Something was telling him to go further down, to keep looking, so he did. He pulled himself forward relentlessly, but the water was like smoke through his fingers and he began to slow, and he almost stopped. He would have turned around and back up if he hadn't caught a glimpse of gold in the gloom. His heart had almost pounded out of his ribcage, and he remembers his chest freezing over as fear claimed him in an icy grip. Pure adrenalin had burst through his veins and he pulled himself down, down into the dark.

And when Kili saw Fili in the gloom of the lake, he seemed to be frozen in motion. Falling, with his eyes shut as though in sleep, but with a smile on his face. And Kili _knew_. His brother was lost to the world.

Everything after that passes by in a blur.

He vaguely recalls breaking the surface of the water with Fili a dead weight in his arms. He doesn't even have time to register where he is before there are two strong arms hauling him back into the boat with Fili, and then he hears the most sickeningly painful cry he's ever heard in his life.

He doesn't even realise it's coming from _him_.

At first, he can't _breathe_. His lungs are on fire from being underwater for so long, but then it begins to feel like an iron bar pressing down relentlessly on his chest. Each desperate gasp for air just causes his chest to ache and burn even more. Otherwise, he feels numb. The cold is stinging all over, and he can't even curl his fingers.

He feels helpless, and _alone_, until he hears Dwalin shouting.

Suddenly, everything comes crashing down around Kili. The iron bar is gone and he's sobbing hysterically, throat red raw. He can see Dwalin hovering over him, eyes wide and face pale, like a lost child.

Kili then realises Dwalin's not looking at him, he's looking at Fili.

_Fili_.

Kili knows he will not forget the feeling that follows. Not through all the years of his life to the end of his days, should he live to see them out.

At first, it's like someone's taken an ice-cold, serrated dagger through him. The tear is uneven, broken. It burns violently, just as much as it feels so bitterly cold, and he closes his eyes and all he can see is the searing pain, white hot and furious, it rips through his chest and it's all he can do to clamp his mouth shut and stop himself from screaming out again.

But then it slowly ebbs like the tide, only it doesn't come back. Not even when they reach the dock with Kili clutching onto the vestiges of consciousness long enough to see Thorin _break_, right in front of him. Kili sees as Thorin crashes to his knees beside him and Fili. He sees his lips move in whispers; a hopeless prayer for Fili. He cracks visibly; his infallible mask had already broken into pieces on the dock, and now he was being stripped to the ugly bones of grief.

But he doesn't even cry out, and Thorin's own silence resonates through Kili and chills him to the bone.

After that, time seems to slow to a standstill. Day and night become the same thing to Kili. The world turns to grey, the colours washed out by his own grief. It seems to him that all the fires of the world grow cold, and he doesn't feel the warmth of fond memories, only the bitterness of his own desolation.

And now, he stands in front of a black granite gravestone, freshly laid. It's simple and plain, engraved in gold.

IN LOVING MEMORY OF FILI OAKENSHIELD

22ND JULY 1991 – 23RD JULY 2012

BELOVED SON TO DIS AND VALI, BROTHER TO KILI AND NEPHEW TO THORIN

NOT ALL THOSE WHO WANDER ARE LOST

Kili's gaze slips to the grey, leather bound journal in his hands, embellished with the symbol of Durin in silver on the front. It looks old and worn, the spine is cracked and the pages are falling out from overuse. There's hundreds. Filled with Fili's messy script, as though his mind was travelling too far ahead of his hand and he simply couldn't keep up with the words. There's little sketches too, of him and Thorin, some of Dwalin and Balin too, and lots of various places in the mountains that Fili loved once upon a time. Everything that made his brother was in this journal. His anger and self doubt, his talent and his love he poured into those pages, it was him. A part of Fili.

And it was all Kili had left of his brother.

Kili sighs and looks up, the wind cool on his face. The funeral was over and done with. Now they just needed to get through the wake. Kili just wanted to go home and sleep. At least then he could pretend none of this was real. None of this had happened. Fili was just in his room, messing about with his phone or doodling or just... _living_. Not dead and buried and left to be forgotten in a lonely cemetery on a mountain in some insignificant country in a vast ocean.

Life is a cruel little fucker, Kili thinks to himself, and he can almost hear Fili laughing at that. Fili would.

But Kili _knows_, he knows Fili _chose_ this. He would not have lied down and died like an old dog; weak and pitiful. He would not have waited for death to take him. After all these years of being held prisoner in the confines of his own mind, Kili knew that Fili had had enough. He had broken free, there was no denying that, but badly scarred and with his hard outer shell shattered to pieces. It was all there to see, but no-one thought to pick up the pieces. No-one reached out to him. Even he, Fili's own _brother_, left him alone. The world had turned its back on Fili, and he doesn't know why he was so surprised when Fili turned his back to the world.

Kili knew then, that Fili would never really be whole again. Not properly. His brother had been _there_, within reach, but beyond repair.

He should have seen this coming a long time ago, Kili thinks, finally.

"Kili?" Thorin sounds so _weary_, Kili can't help but notice. It scares him. Thorin was made of granite, stony faced and steely eyed – _he doesn't break_, Kili had thought. And Kili had been proven wrong. Swallowing back the lump in his throat, he turns his head to see Thorin walking up the hill towards him, hands in his pockets and eyes trained on the grave.

"Hey, uncle." Kili murmurs in reply, but says nothing else as Thorin stands by him, looking like the wind could bowl him over in seconds.

They remain silent for a few moments, neither wants to remember particularly what had happened, yet neither is willing to move on. Stuck in a moment they couldn't get out of. At least, that's what it seems like to Kili.

But Fili did not leave them holding on to nothing, Kili thinks as he glances back down at the journal. There was a letter in there, addressed to him and Thorin both. It's from Fili, of course. Kili hasn't opened it. He hasn't even touched it, until now, when he brings it out to show Thorin. Thorin regards him curiously, but takes the letter nonetheless, and they both begin to read.

_22__nd__ July 2012_

_to Kee and Thorin,_

_i'm getting better_

_finally_

_twenty first birthday today and i can just… forget about everything that's happened because __i'm getting better__ and that's all that matters: being a better brother, a better nephew, a better friend_

_right now it's 11:48pm so there's exactly twelve minutes left of my birthday, bofur's passed out, nori can't get up the stairs, i'm pretty sure thorin sucked at FIFA so he buggered off, and i literally haven't got a clue where everyone else is_

_but that's okay, i'm getting tired now anyway _

_i need to let you know though, that i couldn't have done any of this without you. at all. i wouldn't have gone to the doctors in the first place if not for you, kili, and thorin – you gave me the kick up the arse i needed to sort myself out_

_but now we're getting somewhere_

_if mum and dad were here, they'd be kicking me up the arse for doing sod all too, and i think that's mostly why i did it_

_i want them to be proud of me _

_and kili too, of course, but you've already done them (and me) proud Kee – you're in college and you're doing a bloody good job at it, better than i ever did_

_but i want them to be happy too, wherever they are, i want them to know that… that we're okay, us three_

_we're good_

_that's what dad always used to say, didn't he? "we're good, yeah?" and mahal, it really stuck with you, kee, i don't know why, you always said it. always! still makes me laugh though, little brother._

_i don't even know why i'm writing this letter, i could have just told you this, man_

_i'm gonna finish it anyway, because today, life is good, and i wanna remember this_

_i don't want you to look back on these years with regret, or anger, or sadness, because even though things have been, well, shit - for lack of a better term - you were loved by me, even if i didn't show it half as much as i should have, and in the end, you made my life a happy one, and one worth living_

_and there's no tragedy in that _

_i love you both_

_ Fi _

* * *

**A.N: it's over** **finally over oh god** **this story was haunting me for the longest time, and i will probably come back to it and rework it some time in the future but for now i'm leaving it hear** **before anyone asks, 'not all those who wander are lost' was actually one of the first lines that kickstarted Pyro, so i just had to add it in somewhere! ((i know, i know, it's overused and becoming something of a cliche but ah, it works for Fili so i'm damn well gonna use it) i initially just wanted it to be a one-shot that delved into the deeper workings of this particular Fili, but uh, i skipped that and went for the full out dramatics, it seems...** **once again, thank you so so much to all who reviewed, faved/followed or simply read Pyro - you made every chapter worthwhile!** **i think i'll be venturing back into middle-earth for my next fic which i'm currently trying to figure out a plot for. it'll be durin-centric (i can't help it i'm sorry) and probably - hopefully - a bit happier than Pyro i mean i like angst but even for me this was a bit of an overload D: D:**


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